Notes from ANZSEE conference 2019

The ANZSEE 2019 Conference on Ecological Economics was held in Melbourne this week. I have collected a few photos and quotes from my notes below.

Table of Contents

Joshua Farley

‘One barrel of oil is [equivalent to] 25,000 hours of human labour’
‘There’s no such thing as a sustainable fossil fuel economy’
Regarding the invisible hand of the market: ‘We are creating an invisible foot that kicks the bum of the common good’
‘Between groups, altruistic ones outcompete selfish ones’
‘Group membership is rational – irrational beliefs are rational if required for membership’
‘Cooperation is anti-fragile’
‘Money is backed by the productive capacity of everybody who accepts it’

Jon Altman

Ariel Salleh

Samuel Alexander

‘Entrenching the status quo whilst appearing to reform’
‘We might be able to envision alternatives but the challenge has always been realising them’
‘Voluntary simplicity [as a] coping strategy, even a thriving strategy’
‘Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.’ —Henry David Thoreau
‘Crisis situation – there’s the prospect of heightened sense of meaning and purpose’
‘Capitalism is a dexterous beast’

David Spratt, Kaity Thompson, Harriet O’Shae-Carre

‘Status quo is a suicide’ –U.N. Secretary General António Guterres
‘We’re sacrificing our education’
‘Climate activism is putting my education to use. There’s no point in education on a dead planet.’
‘We can’t withdraw labor but we can remove ourselves from school’
‘Create a world where we can’t repeat our mistakes’
‘[A future in which we] take care of climate out of love, not fear’

Philip Lawn

Ian Lowe, Mike Berry

‘White man speak with forklift truck’
‘If an authority makes a decision it will immediately generate a lobby group to stop that decision from being implemented’
‘Local area action [has] unintended macro consequences’
‘You can never change just one thing in a complex system’

Note: Population is generally a controversial topic and this was touched on by the presenters in their talk, and in the subsequent Q&A.