Symposium on economic growth and sustainability launches difficult conversations
Meant to stimulate “hard conversations” on two essential topics, the Dialogues on Economic Growth and Sustainability held on Utah State University’s Logan campus was an interdepartmental effort.
The symposium was co-organized by Patrick Belmont, department head of watershed sciences; Frank Caliendo, senior associate dean and professor of economics and finance; and Ben Blau, department head and professor of economics and finance. Taking place over three days in February, the symposium was held in the Russell-Wanlass Performance Hall.
The event brought together speakers and panelists from a variety of disciplines in order to have a wide spectrum of perspectives.
According to Belmont, the symposium focused on economic growth and sustainability because those are seen as two conflicting forces. Many things that contribute to environmental issues, such as cutting down forests or the use and consumption of energy sources, are driven by economic growth.
“For decades, we’ve recognized that there’s a conflict there of economic growth and sustainability,” Belmont said. “We’ve been kind of saying, ‘Well, let’s just keep growing and it should work out, and there’s ways we can do it a little bit better.’ But we’re really beating around the bush.”
The symposium was meant to encourage hard conversations, help people think deeply about the issues presented and explore potential solutions.
Jada Staker, a first-year student pursuing environmental studies, attended the last day of the symposium because she wanted to learn more about how the two topics connect and affect each other.
“There’s a lot of perspectives,” Staker said. “I feel like I kind of hear one perspective a lot, being in certain classes and things. But it’s really interesting to hear an economics perspective and a physicist’s perspective, and just go beyond my own ideas.”
Jakob Bell is an art student who painted three different pieces of art representing the conversations and topics covered during each session.
Belmont said they are working on a plan to display the pieces Bell created.
Each day of the symposium had a different focus and purpose.
The first session, held on Feb. 2, was composed mostly of speakers, but most notable were the two keynote speakers who purposefully gave conflicting presentations.
Craig Palsson went first with a presentation titled “Economic Growth Must Continue or We Can’t.” He was followed by Rob Davies with “Economic Growth Will End. Soon. Done Well This Will Be a Good Thing.”
“There wasn’t bickering back and forth,” Blau said. “It was just basically stating a position, right, and I thought that was great. Anyway, I thought that there was a lot of passion in the presentations about these things.”
Palsson is an assistant professor of economics at USU and Davies an associate professor of physics.
“It’s important for students to be able to hear those two sides,” Palsson said. “Also important for us to try and wrestle with that and say, like, ‘OK, this seems like pretty contradicting arguments.’ Is there a synthesis that says like, ‘This is the path that we’re going to be able to achieve?’”
The second session of the symposium, held on Feb. 9, was meant to build off the ideas presented during the first.
“The second day was the hardest of the three to manage,” Belmont said. “We were trying to present some case studies that were relevant, that were building on some of the points that were from the first week.”
Those who presented case studies that day include Kat Bilicka, an associate professor of economics and statistics, and Ken Snyder, the executive director of the Shingo Institute and a senior lecturer at USU.
The last session of the symposium, held on Feb. 16, was focused on wrapping up the conversations had earlier, then looking forward and asking “What now?”
After a few individual presentations given by Jeannie Johnson, an associate professor of political science; Jeff Reece, a social entrepreneur; and Darren Parry, Shoshone Nation tribe leader and visiting professor at the University of Utah, there was a panel to conclude the symposium.
The concluding panel included Courtney Flint, professor of environment and society, and Caitlin McLennan, USU’s sustainability coordinator. The other members of the panel were Davies, Palsson, Reece, Johnson and Parry.
One question asked to the panel was “If you could choose and highlight one value that society should hold on to, no matter what the future holds, what do you think that one of those values should be?”
The values listed by the panel were the natural environment, healing, empathy, charity, community and collaboration, collectivism and complexity.
“This was a launching pad,” Blau said. “Going forward, we can start talking more about maybe ways to solve these really hard problems.”
A new course will be taught at USU focused on climate change solution pathways. The class will be co-taught by Davies and Bilicka.
“She’ll come at it from a very, very well-prepared mainstream economic perspective,” Davies said. “And I will come at it from a biophysical perspective; I’m a physicist by training. So we’re going to come at it from different perspectives. I think we’re going to learn a lot from each other.”
The new course still has to be approved, but the plan is to have it start in spring 2025.
“There’s this question of whether or not one can decouple economic growth from energy and material resource growth,” Davies said. “Can you continue to grow the economy without continuing to grow your use of energy and material resources?”
Davies said the mainstream economic world believes decoupling is possible, but from his perspective, the data doesn’t show evidence of it.
There were conversations throughout the sessions about the Great Salt Lake, including a presentation from Great Salt Lake commissioner Brian Steed. The symposium also addressed economic growth in Cache Valley and its impact on the environment with a presentation from Cache County executive David Zook.
Belmont said he is excited to move forward from the symposium and see what happens now, what conversations will be had and what solutions can be found. He hopes those who attended learned that there can be constructive conversations had with a wide variety of opinions and perspectives involved.
“I worry about binary thinking,” Blau said. “I worry that we’re bifurcating into tribes and allowing those tribes to think for us, and I don’t think that it’s beneficial. We have to do better at making sure that we understand all sides of every argument before we start making policy recommendations.”