Countries that fail to compete trying to hold back the winners.
That attitude is exactly what they are warning about, and is what is going to destroy us all.
Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
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Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#32This ignores innovation, which drastically reduces externalities over time (as it has historically; see smog and pollution from England Industrial revolution). Granted that can benefit or even require investment from the State to expedite things. R&D spending was better in the 20th century. At any rate you cannot divorce said innovation from growth and consumption. By contrast, "degrowth" would inflict harm and make…
These arguments all fell like they're warning that we'll all be drowning in horse manure and running out of guano in 5 years. Likening economic growth to the growth of organisms in a petri dish is the wrong model entirely. We are all the time finding new uses for things and moving on from old ways of powering society. It on;y looks static if you're quite myopic.
> We are all the time finding new uses for things and moving on from old ways of powering society.
Can you provide some examples? With the "all the time" phrasing, something recent would be preferred. All I see for a couple decades is new schemes to further enrich those with money at the expense of those without money.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#33Folks, "Limits to Growth" was published _over fifty years ago_ (https://www.clubofrome.org/ltg50/) and revisited repeatedly since, each time in so doing effectively confirming their worst-case hypotheses.
Yes, their website is...unconvincing. Which is poetic in its own way. Wikipedia's take on the original report at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth is probably a better read.
But we've been able to take a highly systems thinking-inflected, as quantitative as possible approach to looking over how human's current perspective of what "growth" means and applying it over time to the resources of the planet we live on, and conclude with decent confidence and error bars that it's not just unsustainable, but that we're past the point of overconsumption and will have a very uncomfortable "correction", and we've been able to indicate that for decades.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#34> European Union members have signed off on a report that warns focusing on unchecked economic growth is contributing to the destruction of global biodiversity It would be good to know which members of the EU are currently experiencing unchecked economic growth.
GDP or net trade won't tell the important part of the story here. Does the EU import any soy, sugar, coffee, cacao, beef, minerals, etc? Then it is at least contributing to the development pressure on sensitive ecosystems.
To be fair, the EUDR is at least an attempt to begin addressing this problem, though it was poorly executed and has been delayed.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#35Of course, the MBAs pushing for growth missed on physics class that it is impossible for everyone to growth expontentially.
Or biology class to learn that resources grow linearly (arithmetically) but populations grow geometrically (exponentially). So it is possible for everyone to grow exponentially, it's just not sustainable and generally leads to mass famine, disease or war.
MBA think: This is my job. All good, as long as _we_ have it good.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
They already destroyed all of their forest natural resources a long time ago. Maybe they are trying to warn north america of their own mistakes.
We stopped deforesting the US in 1920. We have more forest here than we did 100 years ago.
We do in terms of acreage. A lot of that is reclaimed farmland. Old-growth hardwoods are still down overall, and will remain so; that can take multiple hundreds of years to recover, since cleared forests regrow in phases.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#37> European Union members have signed off on a report that warns focusing on unchecked economic growth is contributing to the destruction of global biodiversity It would be good to know which members of the EU are currently experiencing unchecked economic growth.
They already destroyed all of their forest natural resources a long time ago. Maybe they are trying to warn north america of their own mistakes.
Certainly that's not how the Europeans started out interacting with north America's natural resource. Mostly they treated it like the US does oil deposits now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Arrow_Policy
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#38Growth is what makes us rich enough to afford expensive environmental mitigation.
Growth is also why we need expensive environmental mitigation.
On balance I still like growth and would rather have it than not. But let's be honest about it.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#39Countries that fail to compete trying to hold back the winners.
Compare the forest cover of Haiti and the Dominican Republic - two countries on the same island. Then compare their GDPs, life expectancy, infant mortality and any other indicator of economic and social wellness.
Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn
#40Folks, "Limits to Growth" was published _over fifty years ago_ ( https://www.clubofrome.org/ltg50/ ) and revisited repeatedly since, each time in so doing effectively confirming their worst-case hypotheses. Yes, their website is...unconvincing. Which is poetic in its own way. Wikipedia's take on the original report at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth is probably a better read. But we've been able to…
Back when LtG came out, there was a study of the limits imposed by resource availability. The conclusion was that, to first approximation, the only resource that we had to worry about was energy. Fossil fuels would have to go, but everything else was either available in effectively unlimited amounts or could be substituted with things that were. An example of the latter was mercury -- effectively all previous uses have been replaced with better substitutes (because of toxicity issues, not shortage of the element.)
Pollution also has to be worried about, but there's nothing in a non-fossil fuel powered world that would prevent the current world population from enjoying prosperity indefinitely. There are ultimate limits to energy use on Earth from direct thermal pollution but the world could enjoy US levels of wealth without great trouble.
The exponential process one should be most concerned about today is exponential decline in population.