Beyond Growth: A New Vision for the Future with Till Kellerhoff

What if we stopped treating climate change, inequality, and economic instability as separate problems, and started seeing them as symptoms of a system that needs a fundamental rethink?

In this episode of the Culture Shifts podcast, I’m joined by Till Kellerhof, economist, political scientist, and Program Director at the Club of Rome. As Director of Earth4All, a global initiative aimed at accelerating systems change, Till is helping shape a bold new vision for the future. One that puts human well-being and planetary health at the center.

We explore the legacy of The Limits to Growth, the need for new economic models, and how Earth4All’s “Five Turnarounds” provide a roadmap toward a more just and sustainable world. From taxing extreme wealth to empowering the Global South, this conversation dives deep into the policies – and mindsets – needed to achieve the change. It’s a call to imagination, agency, and action in the face of today’s polycrisis – and a reminder that a better future is possible, if we choose to build it.

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Transcript

Hello, Till Thanks so much for joining the Culture Ships podcast. How are you?

Hi. Thank you for the invitation and I'm personally very well. Um, despite the world not being very well, but I am.

You already answered my first questions or my first question because lately I've been coming back to one question or even if it's more, how do we actually move forward? We live in a time you just said the world is not in a good place. It feels both overwhelming and full of potential. Problems are everywhere. Um, climate, culture, systems in crisis. It's like state of poly crisis but on the same time and this is like where I want to switch full of possibilities you're an economist and political scientist working for let's say the world most renowned think tank the club of Rome the OG think tank let's say to make the world a better place you already mentioned the status of our planet but is it really in such a bad shape or is there also hope

I would say both I think if we look at the numbers and the data The planet certainly is in a very poor state. We're crossing six out of nine planetary boundaries. We see the ecological overshoot in many places by increasing floods, extreme weather events, droughts, and the situation becomes more and more dire. Interestingly, also what happens in the real world is actually often worse than uh still predicted by climate scientists. So this whole narrative of like, oh, there's a doomsday narrative of climate scientists going on, that's just wrong, unfortunately. We see that the events in the real world often unfolds worse than it was predicted. And at the same time, as you mentioned, we are not only confronted with the environmental challenges or catastrophes, but also with social, geopolitical, and all kind of other crisis that then cumulate to something that is often called poly crisis, where an important factor is that all of these different crisis interact and are not to be seen separately from each other. But yes, we are in a very situation, but that doesn't mean that there can't be hope, right? Like we speak about poly crisis, maybe there are also things like poly opportunities to get out of these crisis and solutions that help us to tackle not the problems in silos but different problems at the same time as well. And I think it's important to lay out these visions and political measures that can provide hope then moving forward.

Thank you for that great first overview. I mean you mentioned also poly solutions, poly opportunities. If we look at as you said that All these crisis are connected with each other. Is there a problem that was the origin or the original problem? I mean 50 years ago the club of Rome published the paper the book the limits of growth in 1972 warning that unchecked economic and population growth would push the earth beyond its ecological limits. And right now we are already beyond our ecological limits and also climate limits. If you look back how do you see the impact of that report today and also what lessons have we learned if We have learned the lessons.

Yeah. I mean the history of the limits to growth is very interesting and of course also has a tragic element uh to it right because we today we see that we are overstepping overshooting these environmental boundaries. The club of Rome 50 years ago warned off saying that on finite planet unlimited growth and limited material growth is not possible. And uh the reactions back then were kind of rejecting that message very often. Right? There are these quotes by presidents like Ronald Reagan saying there are no limits to growth because there are no limits to our dreams. And economists kind of answering that this is all exaggerated because you can just substitute certain resources that become scarce by others and if there is an overshoot prices will regulate that and bring things into a new equilibrium. And so I think that the impact of the limits to growth was certainly important in providing a narrative of limits in a time of progress that was seen as limitless. Right through years after the moon landing. Um thinking we can expand the boundaries of our earth and the limits to growth was certainly important in uh setting a counternarrative to that. But of course the real world developments went the opposite direction. In 1972 when the limits to growth was published we were still not in a state of overshoot. We were still living kind of within the planetary boundaries. Today we know that we would need 1.7 earth to sustain the resources and output by our economic system on the earth. So although the real world developments went into a different direction, the limits to growth did set the starting point for an environmental debate for an important debate on boundaries in our world that is still unfolding today. Of course, today we have much better concepts and measurements and are much better able to assess the ecological state we're in. But in that sense, I would say it's a dual message looking back. One, yes, it was influential, but we also learned that this knowledge And this influence did not turn out to actually change the real world events.

What is actually probably not the fault of the report I guess

no it's not the fault of the report but it's interesting if we speak about our how do we change the world today that of course knowledge does not automatically lead to action right there's a quote by John Sturman saying science shows that showing people science doesn't work. We are in a cultural podcast as well cultural shift podcast showing that just by showing data and graphs and science apparently that's not enough to shift systems, but also because of course we are confronted with a an economic system that is intrinsically based on growth, expansion, innovation, efficiency. And that is very kind of difficult to change. Of course, you know, because it's not about minor changes here and there, but it's actually by changing an economic system completely that is at the moment based on material expansion and growth. And therefore, if you ask about root causes of our current policy crisis from a Club of Rome perspective. One important aspect is of course that uh for many decades in the 20th century it was assumed that growth and expansion is kind of a proxy for well-being and that if the economic system itself growth as measured in GDP for example that this is something that contributes to the well-being of people that this is something where we can grow out of our problems be it poverty or be it environmental problems even and we clearly see today that this is not true. We clearly see today that growth is not a good indicator of progress and that we rather need to establish an economic system that functions within the boundaries of our planet and also considering and including the social dimensions of people and so that's not a minor task and it is a big challenge.

Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. Maybe let's go from the club of Rome to also new initiatives. You are program director at the club of Rome but then you're also involved in earth for all rather new initiative that started 2020 and if we think about or look at what the club of Rome used to be a think tank that made people aware of what are the limits of growth what do you have to do but maybe without giving also an agenda or maybe let's say tools to really work on these things earth for all is maybe the development of all of that now isn't it

yeah very much earth for all was established precisely 50 years after the limits to growth was published with the goal one to take stock of what happened in the last 50 years And second, not only describe the problem but also provide solutions and provide answers to the problems and be very concrete in that. And what Earth for all tried to do is both paint out a vision where do we want to go, right? Because we know if we don't have a vision, others will have a vision for us. So it's important to have a vision ourselves, but not just have that vision in the cloud far away, but fill it with concrete political measurements. And in that sense, Earth for all was a big big collaboration. between climate scientists, between economists, between practitioners and attached to that is a big campaign to also, you know, not just write a book and hoping that something changes but work.

But you wrote a book.

We did write a book as well. Exactly. We did write a book in 22 laying out that vision and laying out these concrete political measurements but knowing that just writing the book is not enough and that we want to work on the implementation on different levels on the international level with uh UN institutions in national governments and countries with you. with people with citizen assemblies, all of that and trying to bring all of this together in a comprehensive way. And I would say that yes, 50 years after the limits to growth, it builds on that work very much. It builds on um new conceptualizations of our environmental crisis such as the planetary boundary framework. But I would say the biggest development um since the limits to growth is that it puts a crucial emphasis on the question of distribution and the social aspect of the situation we're in. Because I think we have to be very careful to not think about the environmental crisis as something we are all equally responsible for. Right? We know that certain countries are much more responsible than others while other countries have to suffer more than those who are responsible for. But we also know that by um having more resources by more consumption space um more money that also leads to higher emissions and then therefore there is a huge inequality in the emissions between different individuals in the world. Right. The richest 10% now consume more than 50% of the CO2 emissions in the world. And I think that is the development that's absolutely fundamental that we include the social dimension because we know they're not only environmental boundaries but also social boundaries to our economic system and those have to be tackled together.

Okay. Nice. And this is what you do at Earth for all. I know that there are two scenarios you you present in uh for our planet's future. It's called too little and too late. uh what I like like the title is really nice from a narrative point of view and then there's also the giant leap. Can you maybe give me and the listeners an overview on these scenarios and you you mentioned already that we need new scenarios. We need new let's say also positive utopias. How do you guarantee that or what's your approach on these scenarios of the earth for all?

Yeah, very much. I think one important point is that of course we can't make predictions. You know, no one look knows exactly what the future looks like and That's what we have scenarios for. So to think about what happens if we take certain assumptions um about today's world and the development what happens then in the future. And that was already the goal of the limits to growth 50 years ago. Think about the future based on different assumptions. And the limits to growth developed 12 scenarios. But in the end no one cared about these scenarios. But the book was misinterpreted very often as a doomsday book focusing on one scenario only. Not seeing that already back then it was laid out that there is a way of equilibrium of stabilized earth where we can deal with a mess. And that's why this time in Earth for all it was simplified to only two scenarios. And too little too late is basically the continuation of our current trends where certain things are happening. A little bit of energy transformation here. Looking a little bit at the food system transformation here, but it's really not consistent set of big transformations and changes. It's rather certain incremental changes here and there. And what we see is that this is by far not enough that we will not only overshoot our environmental boundaries that we will by far not be able to keep the twoderee limit that we will overshoot that and that we will be confronted with all the ecological crisis that come through that but also that we will see rising social tension. We will see an increase in inequality both within and between countries which leads people being more and more dissatisfied from the current economic system feeling they are not part of that anymore and then shifting towards populist movements and at the moment particularly extremist right movements.

This is what we basically feel everywhere right now. I mean not everywhere but it's growing a lot.

It is growing a lot and it's important for us to recognize that there are material and social foundations for that why people do vote these movements right sometimes I feel like we have this discourse and focus a lot on these cultural elements particularly we're both from Germany right sometimes we have the impression that people vote right-wing extremist parties because they are told to not eat their schnitzel every day or drive 160 on the outbound. And I think an important factor for us to recognize is that very often it is uh due to material foundations, people feeling worried about their economic future, people with lower income, the lower middle class feeling that inflation is hitting them the hardest. Um that they have less and less money. We see that empirically as well. We have decreasing real income for lower and middle income groups. And that is the reason or important reason for people looking um at easy and simple solutions and at the moment unfortunately it's the right benefiting from that through simplified and an emotional discourse and that basically is something that gets reinforced and gets stronger in this too little too late scenario and that's why we set as another scenario as the positive way out of this polio crisis we are in a scenario called the giant leap and the giant leap scenario basically describes five transformations in our global economic system these five transformations are transformation of our energy system, of our food system as the biggest environmental blocks, but then also massively social factors like reduction of inequality, reduction of poverty and empowerment, particularly for women that as an integrated set of measures and policies have the potential to achieve something like well-being for all within planetary boundaries. And you mentioned the question of why is it important to have this vision? Why is it important to have this giant leap there? And I think it is crucial that also progressives paint a positive vision of the future that is not just based on oh we want to prevent the apocalypse and we want to deal with the worst consequences of climate change but rather switch it around and say like no this transformation is actually to achieve a better life for people and is there to deal with our current crisis of course but is also to regain things like freedom for example freedom of clean air of clean rivers of a society that sticks together and is not polar rising all the time. And all of these aspects, I think, are important to paint out so that people see the transformation is not something that should cost them a good life, but it's rather something that should enable this good life. And that's why scenarios are so important.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I mean, if you look at what you just said about that, we need to give people the narratives and also the scenarios, the positive scenarios for the future such as clean air, water, access to the the essentials. I mean, if we're not looking just on the on the west or on Europe or the western world but more also towards the global south etc. Here in Europe people as you mentioned are already I don't know getting angry and voting far right because because someone says okay I I cut the meat for lunch in the canteen and we are not able to drive our car with 200 km an hour but this is very reactionary also because it's very based on ideas and also very much based on let's say needs that are not important anymore right now. If we look at the state of the world, how can we shape these narratives? Because I even sometimes have problems. I mean, just talking with an older generation about these shifts, you know, and say, "Hey, you know that the Arab gets better if we're not driving so fast." I had a podcast the other day with an architect from Bangladesh and she was telling me about the problems they have there, how they need to find solutions to to get people and the local communities living their lives because they need to move every day because of drought, water, flooding etc.

Very very much. I think that's one point. How do we do that? And I think we besides a material crisis we are facing at the moment and the real consequences of climate change but also distrust in our society's polarization all that what we can observe there's also a crisis of imagination and many progressives struggle to offer kind of a concrete and alternative vision right that does actually challenge the status quo and I think also in the current situation we have to be careful to not open up a narrative between two futures. One is basically technofudalism and oligarchy and what we see at the moment in the US for example as a dystopian one way and the other way of just going back what was before because what was before was also not normal. What was before was also leaving people behind destructing and destroying our environment etc. And therefore there needs to be an alternative that goes beyond our current thought models. There is this quote sometimes attributed to Fiser or or Xijek. I'm sure it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, right? And I think that shows that we are all caught up in certain models of our mind and in certain ways of thinking that are very much based on our current ways of living that then create something like an ideological hijgemony where it's difficult to paint other visions to get out of that and I think therefore it is crucial for progressives to come together there and regain kind of hijgemony over an alternative future that leaves no from behind that works within the planetary limits and make clear that what the right-wing at the moment is doing is a wrong alternative. Right? There is no such thing as going back to a past based on the order we and all these promises that are there. The alternative is not something like business as usual and we just continue our way or some transformation and we do something differently. The world will change either way and the question is only can we change it actively or will it change us and I think if that is something we open up more and say, "Look, the future will be different than the past, but we have now the power to change it and to shape it in the direction we want. And we want to shape it in a direction that does not try to benefit from social fragmentation as the right does at the moment, right? Telling people basically that it's even the next weaker group that is the fault of their misery, right? Like telling unemployed people it's the fault of the foreigners why they are so telling low middle-class people that it's the fault of the unemployed why they are so poor and thereby establishing something which is a little bit like this onion concept, people pushing always against the outside and the next weaker group, but rather say, hey, we have a joint interest and the problem is not certain people at the edges, but it is rather an economic system that only benefits very few people at the moment and leaves many people behind. And last point on your question, it's of course absolutely true that this always looks different at different places, right? So that's why Earth for All also drafted this global book for a vision for change on the global level, but then get very specific in other reports and studies on what that would look like at different places trying to keep this global vision but pin down very very concretely what this means at different places.

Yeah, thank you. I mean that brings me also to the idea of like just looking at at the names Club of Rome, Earth for all as a logical development also for inclusivity for being a bit more accessible because the Club of Rome sounds nice but it has Club in its name and then has Rome in its name. So, it shouldn't be a club. And as far as I know, the think tank is not even based in Rome anymore. So, Earth for All also sounds um let's say for me personally also more hopeful and more without making Club of Rome bad obviously, but it sounds like hey this is the next step. This is the development. This is what we need. You mentioned this scenarios or the situations where people right now also look more towards the ones that have less than you have. to make them responsible for your own situation. What is wrong obviously if you look around if you look what's happening in the world where the richer become more rich where the billionaire became the new millionaires and one of the five extraordinary turnarounds of earth for all is focused on ending poverty and as far as I know your research your personal focus also you wrote a book about it the title tax the rich how do you see poverty reduction empowerment as essential pillars for broader systemic transformation and should we really tax the rich more

absolutely And I think there are two dimensions to that. On the international level, we just have to see that we are in a situation at the moment where we have so much wealth in many countries. At the same time, still 700 million people in extreme poverty and poverty rising across the globe, right? And that just can't be right. We see that this is a massive problem still and that we are going in the wrong direction. You know, in a world of increasing wealth of billionaires, we can't have at the same time increasing misery of the poorest. And I think there are different dimensions to that. One is of course very much an economic system that is not able to lift people out of poverty due to wrong political measures, economic policies. For example, this whole aspect of opening the markets and letting private markets kind of take care of the situation. Less state intervention, less subsidies, all these things that have never worked to lift people out of poverty. And if we look at successful examples of lifting people out of poverty in the past, like South Korea, Taiwan, these tiger states, It was very often in the beginning protection of infant industry, protection of government controlled banks and credits, all of these things. So at the moment trying to fight this problem with the wrong recipes, the economist Hayon Chan called it once, we're kicking away the ladder on which we all climbed up on, right? Because we managed to get out of poverty or many countries did with other measures that are being suggested today. So we need to look at the economic system there. But one element of that as you ask about the taxation is of course uh dealing with obscene levels of inequality we see at the moment in the world. We have to recognize that more money at some point doesn't translate anymore into more consumption or more possibilities to do but also into more power. We see that at the moment being played out in the US with a kind of oligarchic way of dealing with a country, right? We have the symbolic picture of the tech bros sitting in the first row.

Broligarchs.

Broliarchs. Exactly. Um different terms for it. Janis Varoufakis told it Technofeudalism  but broligarchs, oligarchs. It's just astonishing that you how obviously you see that people can buy power and influence with money and at the same time how more cliche do you want to get at the same time the richest man in the world cutting the money through USA ID for the poorest people in the world and people are starving people are dying because of that so it's really really um a very bad situation and that means that taxing the rich needs to happen for two reasons one we do need massive resources globally to both deal with the catastrophes of climate change. Right? If there are extreme weather events in poor countries, there needs to be more distribution mechanisms globally to pay back from rich countries who have caused this mess to poor countries so that they can deal with that. And there are on UN level different discussions on it. But all of that is not sufficient. And taxing the rich as a second consequence is also that just reducing inequality and thereby reducing the power of a few is a value in itself. And therefore there are different mechanisms as well for doing that globally. An interesting approach came through the G20 last year where thoughts on a minimum tax of global billionaires which would only affect 3,000 people in the world but bring around $250 billion. So really a lot of money for not harming anyone through that. But also in different countries there are different additional measures one could take. And us both being from Germany we um have an inheritance tax for example that uh really doesn't work at all the way it should. And rich people can buy their way out of it or not buy their way out of it just not pay the tax for that through different measurements which then leads to a system where you only become rich through inheritance and not through work and uh being you know all these things all these narratives of a of of liberal parties saying that just work hard you will come rich. No you become rich through inheritance and being born in the right family. And so if we speak about reducing inequality the taxation angle is one however embedded of course into broader economic system change initiatives.

Thank you. How can we be part of that? I mean, it sounds like a very closed specialized group of people. What totally makes sense, but is there a way of um that maybe our listeners can be part in terms of hey, I have this problem. I see this shift happening. I see inequality rising. Let's say not just in my town, but maybe in my street. I see the waters not being clean anymore. I see I'm overwhelmed by what is happening. and I don't know where to start but I want to start doing something. Is there a chance to be part of Earth for all or club of Rome initiatives? Yes definitely um and that to different levels. So uh as you say Club of Rome itself is a membership organization which is indeed a little bit closed similar concept from the 70s trying to bring together a network of people from different disciplines and be able to discuss with each other but particularly through one national associations it's possible possible to contribute to that. So club of Rome has national associations in many countries where one can connect to that's on the website and try to see what programs are happening in these countries and through earth for all specifically we have different engagement tools I would say one inerson uh meetings in different countries where we do our national engagement campaigns where we try to tailor the global earth for all solutions to national circumstances and organize uh workshops uh organize youth fora organize hopefully soon citizen assemblies in collaboration with others. So where people can bring in their thoughts. So Club of Rome traditionally is not the institution to kind of work with individuals all across the world just because it's so much focused on the system change lens but we do try to expand that through specific initiatives and if people are interested I would just recommend to check out the website.

Fantastic. Thank you. If uh we go back to the beginning of our conversation yeah we introduced ourselves so we said hi to each other and you said yeah I'm doing good apart from the state of the world we are in right now. This is a narrative that I heard recently a lot. Let's say recently, let's say post pandemic, post 2020. This is something that I hear a lot that people are constantly also referring to the status of the world being asked how they are doing. So I'm doing good but or I'm doing okay despite what's going on right now. If you look towards let's say a utopia, what would be a utopia? And you said we need positive utopias to make and give the people hope, to give them new stories, to give them also, let's say, also a younger generation the motivation to live and to do things because there's a huge amount of young people also that are afraid that the next day is going to be worse than the day we live in right now. What could be such a positive utopia from your personal perspective?

From my personal perspective, in very broad terms, it would be described as a system that does provide well-being within the boundaries of our planet. That's very vague, I know, but Very concretely, it would mean that we shift our economic systems so that they appreciate something like community and togetherness over individualism and kind of outsourcing the responsibilities to the individual where we see that we are dealing not only with the environmental uh factors but also with our social crisis such as pandemic of loneliness, right? Increasing burnout, increasing depressions, increasing social challenges in all kind of countries in the world. world and where there is an emphasis to that by an economic system targeting this directly saying hey we need to solve misery of people inequality all these things and not try to go the way via a proxy that is growth and say by that it will kind of solve itself automatically so kind of putting an emphasis on an economic system that serves the people through different measurements and I think what earth for all tried to do without saying or predicting that this is the future we go to it's basically saying that scient ifically it is possible to achieve this and scientifically it is possible to get back into planetary boundaries after overshoot and have a more consistent society and I would say that for all of that for this utopia and I don't think you know one individual should paint a utopia everyone can then come behind in but everyone has their own little utopia but I think in order to fulfill that the fundamental lever is our economic system which is at the moment preventing us of achieving that

yeah and I think it's also very important to have utopias instead of dis topias that basically we are sometimes waking up and think about living in dystopian uh moments when you mentioned the loneliness when you mentioned what what it causes also I'm thinking about technology as the main let's say problem of our time I mean it's probably also a solution for everything for example also that we have this podcast right now but on the same time if we think of technological developments they made the richer richer They made us lonelier because we use social media more or people get isolated because of the tools. They take all the energy. AI takes water takes energy. They cause international tensions because of microchips. When we just think about the US, Taiwan, China, if technology wouldn't be there, do you think we would have equal problems? I think technologies as many tools are a question of how they are being used and could be used both in a positive and negative way. As an example, Yes, of course. We at the moment see that AI is using massive amounts of energy and is also again the problem of being monopolized by a few and thereby benefiting for a few. One has to be very careful that it's being used in the right direction which could however at some point free people uh from work that would not be necessary anymore, right? Where labor wouldn't be necessary and the bad things people don't want to do are being replaced while people have more time to focus on the creative and great things of our life. That's a Opia of course I know I know that many things don't go in that direction at the moment but I would say that also looking at the past we see both ways of technologies uh that have caused fantastic things you know look at medical progress uh but also look at our topic here of energy transformation that we have today the technical means to provide sufficient energy by sustainable uh resources is also due to technical advances of course in the fields of energy and electricity and all of that and so I would say technology is always a dual thing and it always depends really on how it is being used but I would also be cautious in denying um positive examples that that came out of the the technological progress in the past.

Mhm. Thank you. To round this up maybe going from technology to the analog world, you published books. You were um co-author also for the Earth for All book. You wrote tax the rich. Um is there a current book or a publication that you would recommend the listeners or also me to read to maybe get up in the morning and say hey it's not that bad at all or it's bad but we can do better and there's hope there's hope and I think there are quite some books dealing with that problem besides the one we have now discussed there was a recent publication by Tim Jackson um who became famous 10 years ago or 15 years ago through um a book called Prosperity without growth who just wrote another one focusing on health aspects with our economy, a healthy people and a healthy planet. And what Tim does very well is combining economic insights with beautiful language and almost a philosophical way of writing about these things. That's one recommendation. I think there are many others for what people are interested. There's a lot of literature on economic system change and transformation. But maybe I would also say that while it's important to read these non-fiction books and kind of keep hope about the possibilities of change in our world, sometimes I think it's also important to read books that are a little bit detached from our current present and help us to order the current crisis we are in.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for uh the recommendation and this nice roundup. Thank you Till for being part of Culture Shifts Magazine podcast. Till Kellerhof, Club of Rome and Earth for All, thanks for the conversation.

Thank you and thanks for the invitation.