This post is part of a series dedicated to bringing together articles and books from a range of great writers. I cannot add much extra value to these texts; I only hope to point you in an interesting direction if you wish to delve further into any of these topics.
Our economy, and most economies around the world, is based on economic growth.
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals include economic growth, illustrating how entrenched this idea of continuous growth is in mainstream thinking.
We have been aware for decades that our growth has limits, and that many of those limits are fast approaching or have been reached already.
Economic growth does not exist in a vacuum. All our economic activity requires energy and materials, whether it be physical products, people-based services, or online activity. Some believe we can disconnect or decouple our economic activity from environmental impacts, and continue on a path of green growth, sustaining the current growth model. However, we have not managed to absolutely decouple our growth from environmental harm, and there is little reason to believe we can in the future.
"The validity of the green growth discourse relies on the assumption of an absolute, permanent, global, large and fast enough decoupling of economic growth from all critical environmental pressures. The literature reviewed clearly shows that there is no empirical evidence for such a decoupling currently happening. This is the case for materials, energy, water, greenhouse gases, land, water pollutants, and biodiversity loss for which decoupling is either only relative, and/or observed only temporarily, and/or only locally."
"Proponents of so-called green growth—economic growth that uses natural resources in a sustainable manner—must show that it is possible to effectively eliminate carbon emissions from developed economies in the space of little more than a decade with no impact at all on economic expansion."
So what is the solution? It is obvious we cannot continue down the path we're currently on. In comes the idea of degrowth. Degrowth is planned reduction or contraction in economic activity, with a focus on improving lives for average people.
"Instead of economic growth and wasteful production, we must put life and wellbeing at the center of our efforts. While some sectors of the economy, like fossil fuel production, military and advertising, have to be phased out as fast as possible, we need to foster others, like healthcare, education, renewable energy and ecological agriculture."
We are now aware that unlimited economic growth is neither possible nor desirable, and that there is an alternative. If change is going to occur in the public sector, there needs to be policies to encourage degrowth.
Once the economy undergoes degrowth for some time, and certain environmental, social and political thresholds are met, there will be a place where this degrowth ceases, and we will enter a steady state economy.
Through these economic, political, financial and environmental changes, it is possible to reach a state of long-term equilibrium that serves all people and the rest of nature. It should be noted that although degrowth isn't an inevitability, if we don't head in that direction soon, the economy and natural systems will begin (rather, continue) to collapse of their own accord. Our current direction is unsustainable and something will give eventually. We are already seeing the evidence of this collapse in species extinction, weather events, financial crises, and the current pandemic. Economic change must happen, and it's up to us whether it is painful or not.
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