Last week Foreign Policy published an article I wrote titled “Why growth can’t be green.” It stirred a lively online discussion – and of course attracted dissenters. Among them was one Noah Smith, who penned a critical op-ed in Bloomberg. You can read it here.
I wrote to Noah and asked whether he would let me respond on the same platform, where he contributes a regular column. To my delight, he agreed. So I pitched to his editor, copying Noah. But I received no response. Perhaps he’s less interested in the debate than he initially let on. Poor form, by my lights – but oh well. Here are some of the points I would have made.
1. It’s about resource use, not energy
The main problem with Noah’s piece is that the whole thing is based on either awkward confusion or intentional sleight of hand.
My argument in FP was that it is impossible to achieve absolute decoupling of resource use from GDP on a global scale, even with rapid efficiency gains and aggressive taxes on resource extraction. This is the conclusion reached by literally every existing study that has been conducted on the matter (you can follow links to the original research here). The reason is simple: the rate of decoupling is outstripped by the normal rate of GDP growth, even in high-efficiency scenarios. To make matters worse, there are physical limits to resource efficiency, and as we approach them the rate of improvement slows down, giving yet more force to the scale effect of GDP growth.
In an era in which we are already dramatically overshooting the planetary boundary on material footprint, this means that aggregate global economic growth cannot continue if we want to avoid chewing through the web of life on which our civilization depends.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
