The panel discussion held during the "Dialogue for a Sustainable Economy", 7th December 2019, organised by the 'NSW Chapter of the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy' (CASSE NSW Inc). The discussion, chaired by Dr Haydn Washington, included A/Prof Phil Lawn, Zahra Kumarasinhe, Dr. Anna Schlunke and the Hon Bob Debus (former NSW Minister for the Environment).

A number of leading Australian minds reflect on our progress towards the Steady State Economy, sharing the reflections of other as they addressed the important transitions that have to be made.

This presentation is from Associate Professor Philip Lawn, given at the "Dialogue for a Sustainable Economy", 7th Dec 2019. The event was made possible by the ‘NSW Chapter of the Centre for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy’ (CASSE NSW Inc). A/Prof Philip Lawn is an ecological economist, currently affiliated with the Centre for Full Employment and Equity at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is also a research fellow with the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity and a member of the Wakefield Futures Group (South Australia) . His presentation makes “the case for transitioning from the growth economy to the steady state economy”.

Assoc Prof Philip Lawn at the Economic Reform Australia meeting in late December 2018 (Adelaide, Australia) talking about Resource Decoupling.

In this video, Brian Czech outlines the biggest challenge for our democracy in the 21st century: to find the right size of the economy to establish a steady state. That means finding a balance between economics and nature—one in which endless economic growth is not in conflict with planet Earth. Visit the CASSE website for more videos.

We were privileged to welcome Dr Haydn Washington to International House as the 2016 speaker for the Walter Westman Lecture on Sustainability, Humanity and the Environment. Haydn's topic was 'Sustainabilty: time to move past waffle and denial?'. What is sustainability? What is it we are sustaining, and for whom and how long. The word is in danger of becoming an empty shibboleth, while its cousin ‘sustainable development’ is in large part an oxymoron when society has exceeded the Earth’s limits (as we have). A child can tell one that on a finite planet you cannot grow physically forever, yet society still operates as if we can. Why? Humanity’s key problem is denial, the ability to switch off our reason and believe in the absurd. This is one reason why the term ‘sustainability’ has become buried under academic waffle and jargon. If we wish to reach any meaningful ‘sustainability’ then it is well and truly time to demystify the term and get serious about solutions, so we avoid the extinction of perhaps two thirds of life by 2100. That means confronting terms society does not like to discuss, such as overpopulation and overconsumption. It means accepting that endless growth is not only not good, it is the key driver of unsustainability. It means changing our worldview, our society and our economy. Our economy must be based within the ecological limits of the Earth, hence we need a ‘steady state’ economy. However, denial stops us from moving to the challenging but positive solutions that do exist. We can solve the environmental crisis – but only if we break the denial dam that blocks sustainability. Dr Washington is the author of Demystifying Sustainability, Human Dependence on Nature, and Climate Change: Heads in the Sand. He is a visiting fellow in interdisciplinary environmental sciences at UNSW and has a forty year history as an environmental scientist, writer and activist. He has a degree in ecology, a Masters of Science in eco-toxicology (heavy metal pollution), a Dip. Ed., and a Ph.D. 'The Wilderness Knot' in Social Ecology (2007). www.sydney.edu.au/internationalhouse

Herman Daly on "Ecological Economics for an Ecological Civilization," a plenary address for SEIZING AN ALTERNATIVE: Toward an Ecological Civilization, a major international conference held on the campus of Pomona College, Claremont, CA June 4-7, 2015. John B. Cobb, Jr. joins Daly's plenary discussion moderated by Public Radio International's Warren Olney.

Dan O'Neil of Leeds University talks about his new book Enough is Enough, and argues for 'degrowth', at Leeds Cafe Scientifique.

An interview of Dan O'Neill, lecturer in ecological economics at the University of Leeds (UK), and the chief economist at the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE, USA), recorded during the International Conference "An innovative society for the XXI century" held at Paris on July 12 & 13. Dan reminds that there is not one change that we can make to allow us to achieve an economy without growth, but a number of things which have to come together. This is the point that came out from a conference held in Leeds in 2010 on that topic : we need to make changes in a number of areas (to stabilize ressources, to reduce inequalities, to reform the financial system, to reduce working hours, etc.). Dan O'Neill insists on the problem we have at the moment : the fact that most of our money is created by private banks in the form of loans. When banks make loan, they create : an asset ("the money I am going to pay them back in the future") and a liability ("the money which the have given to me"). As long as these cancel each other out, the system can work. But the problem comes when one is not working, driving inflation and economic instability.