Welcome to our guest author, Dona Matthews, sharing her reaction to Value(s) by Mark Carney. I haven’t read it, but I do agree that Canada just might have stumbled upon a leader who gets it — and not a moment too soon. Like she says in her conclusion, I’m not keen on his energy policy including so much LNG (aka fracked gas). But I do love all the principles she defines in this book review, and it gives me hope that there’s a solid master plan. I think this review is a great read even for people who are on the fence about his politics.

Book Review: Value(s): Building A Better World, by Mark Carney

by Dona Matthews

Small Steps Will Take Us There

When reading Mark Carney’s 2022 book, Value(s): Building a Better World for All, I was struck by how well it resonates with Robin Spano’s sustainable steps approach. In this book—written years before he became involved in politics—Carney makes a big-picture argument for a small-steps approach that each one of us can apply in our own lives. He wrote, “By living the values of sustainability, resilience, and responsibility in tackling climate change, you will inspire others, just as Canadians have during Covid. And collectively, these efforts are helping to shift market values, putting them in service of our human values.” 

Not a Typical Politician’s Book

Although Carney is now the Prime Minister of Canada, Value(s) is not a typical political memoir or politician’s autobiography. Instead, it’s a dense, thoughtful, and informed analysis of where we are now, and what we can do to make things better for the world our kids and grandkids will inherit. I closed the book feeling more optimistic about the possibilities of turning climate change around – but it was a call to action, too.

Professional Background

Mark Carney is a respected economist who has taken on some tricky global financial challenges–and navigated them with skill. From 1995 to 2003, he worked at Goldman Sachs in many different capacities, including emerging debt capital markets, and the 1998 Russian financial crisis. Many observers credit Carney’s actions as Governor of the Bank of Canada with helping Canada avoid the worst impacts of the 2008 financial crisis. 

In 2012, Carney was appointed Governor of the Bank of England. I was a Canadian living in England at the time, and remember the ridicule he was subjected to as the first non-Brit to be appointed to that prestigious and very public role. By the end of his term in 2020, Carney was generally respected as having saved Britain from a major collapse due to Brexit, but his tenure was also seen as controversial. One of the reasons for this was his emphasis on the threat to the financial system from climate change. He warned that extreme weather events like hurricanes, heatwaves, and floods pose significant risks to banks and insurance companies.

In his next job, as UN special envoy for climate action and finance, Carney became more directly involved in looking for solutions to the economic risks due to climate change. He worked with considerable success along with others to get the financial sector to invest in net-zero emissions. 

Carney’s Family
Carney is married to Diana Fox Carney, a climate and energy policy expert who specializes in developing nations. They met when they were both hockey-playing economics students at Oxford. She has long been involved in social justice and environmental causes, and has been described as an “eco-warrior.” 

They have four children, Cleo, Tess, Amelia and Sasha. Cleo, the eldest, is a Harvard student who writes for environmental newsletters. Tess and Amelia have mostly stayed out of the limelight, but Sasha (previously known as Sophia) is a freelance writer who has written about their non-binary identity and trans advocacy.

Although Carney is well-known for his environmental and economic concerns, he’s less well-known for his emphasis on the importance of gender equity. As the UN’s climate change envoy, he said that “Women are often disproportionately affected by the impacts of climate change, and there can be tremendous synergies between efforts to achieve gender equality and address climate change. Gender-responsive climate investments can strengthen climate and environmental outcomes, open up business opportunities, and be financially more effective.”

The Book

Value(s): Building a Better World for All is a big book that includes a lot of big ideas. The unifying theme as I see it is the need to think about our fundamental values, in the context of the inextricability of social, economic, and environmental health. For a society to thrive, Carney argues, the strength of each one of these three factors depends on the health of both of the others.

Unlike so many politicians and opinion-makers, Carney doesn’t pit economic success and environmental health against each other, or argue that financial prosperity requires cutting back on social spending. Instead, he argues that these factors are all intricately interconnected components of the ecosystem that is our planet. According to his analysis, social, economic, and environmental health are all required for a society’s well-being and prosperity.

Carney built Value(s) around an analysis of three different crises: the 2008 global financial turmoil, COVID, and climate change. He observed that these experiences illustrate the importance of seven values that underpin a successful economy:

Dynamism to help create solutions and channel human creativity;

Resilience to make it easier to bounce back from setbacks while protecting society’s
most vulnerable;

Sustainability across generations;

Fairness, especially in markets, to maintain their legitimacy;

Responsibility, so that individuals feel responsible for their actions;

Solidarity, whereby citizens share a commitment to each other and society; and

Humility, to recognize the limits of our knowledge, understanding, and power.

He argues that it is only by affirming these values, and building institutions that support them, that countries can flourish.

Alignment with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

What do all these abstract values mean in practice? As I wrote about in my post on this blog on Carney’s similarities to Banksy, Carney argues for many of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals:

Quality Public Education. Carney sees good universal public education as critical to a society’s well-being. He writes, “Sustained economic progress depends on inclusive economic institutions that allow and encourage the great mass of people to take part in economic activities that make the best use of their talents and skills…Education must be both of high quality and open to all.” (p. 114)

Decent Work and Economic Growth. Carney observes, “We need to focus technology on improving the quality of existing jobs, on enabling workers to build their skills, and on helping them unleash their creativity through greater connectivity across Canada and with the wider world.” (p. xviii)

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. According to Carney, “Addressing climate change is one of the greatest commercial opportunities of our time.” (p. xiv)

Reduced Inequality. Carney writes, “More equal societies are more resilient, they are more likely to invest for the many not the few, and to have robust political institutions and consistent policies…A society that provides opportunity to all its citizens is more
likely to thrive than one which favours an elite, however defined…Inequality has a
statistically significant negative impact on economic growth.” (p 108)

Climate Action – Carney writes, “Climate change is the ultimate betrayal of intergenerational equity.” (p. 7). He devotes a section of the book to describing the climate crisis and what we need to do to address it, stating a bold collective ambition: to work toward “A planet fit for our grandchildren.” (p. 226)

Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions. In the chapter entitled, “How Canada Can Build Value for All,” Carney writes, “Strong institutions and fair and effective markets are the foundations of opportunity for all.” He goes on to say that this includes “formal institutions—like parliaments, judiciaries, central banks, social safety nets, and schools—and informal associations and groups, such as trade unions, guilds, and charities.” (p. 412)

Conclusion

Value(s) is a long dense book that would have benefited from being edited down by a third. But it provides a brilliant analysis of our current geopolitical situation, delineating what steps are needed to create an environmentally sustainable, wealthy, and flourishing society, where every citizen has a chance to thrive.

Some environmental advocates in Canada are criticizing Carney for pulling back on important green initiatives like the carbon tax, and for talking about the need for an energy infrastructure that includes pipelines. My daughter’s big beef with him is his support of the LNG industry, which uses fracked gas. As a lifelong environmentalist, I share all those concerns, but as I see it, Carney understands better than I’ve ever heard enunciated that the environment is part of the global ecosystem that includes (a) people’s ability to earn a living and live good, safe, productive lives; (b) governments’ ability to protect their citizens and enable resilience; and (c) the social capital required to make it all work. 

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to be part of the solution to the environmental catastrophes we are already beginning to experience – but needs some inspiration, and to see a roadmap they can actually believe in