How to ‘decouple’ emissions from economic growth? These economists say you can’t.
At least, not fast enough to reach international climate targets.
Instead of making growth greener, economists call for a whole new economic paradigm to address converging social and ecological crises. They call it “post-growth,” referring to a reorientation away from GDP growth and toward other metrics, like human well-being and ecological sustainability.
@corlin We live in an almost entirely closed system, yet we accept the idea of an economy that is only "healthy" when it is getting bigger and bigger.
That is the problem.
I'm sure the people who sit at the top of an economy that burns 90% of resources, so they can have 90% of what's left would love an economy that grows and grows.
But it makes no logical sense, and defies physical law.
An economy should reach homeostasis, with excess against destabilizing influences and for innovation.
@corlin But we've based our economy on scarcity, and create a false sense of "growth" for the last many years, by consistently borrowing more and more from the future. We use resources and energy far faster than we replace them, and create waste faster than we recover it.
You can't infinitely grow in a closed system. The idea is stupid on its face.
It's not that "this is just how things are". This is what we built. We can un-build it and make something functional.
Well said:
A growth based economy is fundamentally incompatible with life on earth. At its root. This is not an opinion, nor a political stance.....
It is god damn physics.
