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Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

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Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#41

Post by AndrewKemendo »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #35
canadiantim wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are zero communities larger than a few thousand people that do not think precisely like this

This is every affinity group on the planet including:

Extended families Religious groups Fraternal organzations Mutual aid groups Nation states

It’s also true of fungi, tree systems, bacterial colonies, insect groups…

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#44

Post by abeppu »

I don't have any deep background in econ, but do we not need to switch from talking about GDP to talking about a version of Net Domestic Product where "net" includes:

- changes to the value of natural and ecosystem resources (e.g. if I clear a forest to sell timber, we must acknowledge some lost value for the forest)

- amount of economic transactions in service of mitigating problems created by externalities from other activity (e.g. if my pollution gets into your groundwater, you paying to remediate the pollution isn't "value created")

I.e. growth of _actual net value_ still sounds like a good thing to pursue but we let our politicians run around doing anything to maximize GDP without talking about what the "gross" is hiding.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#45

Post by pfdietz »

boringg wrote: post #25
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tree-cover-loss

Are you trying to argue that Europe hasn't decimated their forests?

Europe's tree cover is increasing.

https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/jrc-news-and-upda...

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#46

Post by ZenoArrow »

philipallstar wrote: post #2

> 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.

> It would be good to know which members of the EU are currently experiencing unchecked economic growth.

All of them.

You can see recent stats (from 2025) on GDP growth here, all the handful of countries with negative growth are outside the EU:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_...

You may be confusing fast growth with unchecked growth. If you see sustained YoY growth of a couple of percent this can quickly accelerate over many years. For example, 2% growth means doubling the size in 35 years. This has a notable impact on the natural world, as the economic system is linked to our material reality.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#47

Post by pfdietz »

boxed wrote: post #27
Tepix wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It hasn't worked with nuclear waste, has it? It's not working for corals either. The rest of them will be dead in 10 or 15 years. And they are the ecosystem for 25% of the Ocean's species. When is this expensive environmental mitigation going to turn the tide around?

> It hasn't worked with nuclear waste, has it? You mean the nuclear waste that we banned companies from using as nuclear fuel for modern reactors? I think you will find that regulation actually stopped us from solving this problem. > It's not working for corals either. Imagine if we had much more nuclear power so we didn't produce enormous amounts of CO2! The corals would be in a much better position. The "environmen…

> You mean the nuclear waste that we banned companies from using as nuclear fuel for modern reactors?

There is no need to ban this because it (and reprocessing in general) is economically idiotic. It would be like saying government bans prevent companies from setting money on fire.

Dry cask storage is a quite acceptable and economical way to deal with nuclear waste. The demand that something permanent be done immediately reflects a desire to use waste as a lever against nuclear energy. Nuclear fans would do well not to fall into this trap and think immediate reprocessing is necessary or desirable.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#48

Post by ZenoArrow »

bluescrn wrote: post #6

May not be a problem if the trend continues that wealthy/high-consumption cultures choose to stop reproducing?

Not really. If economic activity with a material basis increases faster than the reproduction rate decreases, you'll still see an overall increase in resource extraction.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#49

Post by ixxie »

abeppu wrote: post #44

I don't have any deep background in econ, but do we not need to switch from talking about GDP to talking about a version of Net Domestic Product where "net" includes: - changes to the value of natural and ecosystem resources (e.g. if I clear a forest to sell timber, we must acknowledge some lost value for the forest) - amount of economic transactions in service of mitigating problems created by externalities from oth…

It's just very hard to measure.

On the corporate scale, see the whole carbon / ESG / impact measure ent industry. Lifecycle Analysis, supply chain extrapolation, Bill of Materials analysis.

You only get some relatively crude estimate and a lot of missing data points, whereas economic growth can conveniently assign a dollar value on everything.

I think it only gets worse as you scale up.

Re: Obsession with growth is destroying nature, 150 countries warn

#50

Post by tehjoker »

canadiantim wrote: post #10
pjmlp wrote: post #3

Of 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.

This is the malthusian argument, and in a vacuum it sounds right but didn’t account for decreasing family size with wealth and the ability of the economy to just barely eke out something like a percent or two of surplus.

In China, the one child policy, for better or worse, was instituted to ensure that gains from industrialization were not eaten up immediately, leaving no surplus for quality of life and reinvestment.

malthus had a point but it is not destiny and the real world reflects that. his was an avoidable trap

now if we can gain control over capitalism we can save the earth

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