{"id":20140,"date":"2016-04-21T20:57:45","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T01:57:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20140"},"modified":"2016-04-21T20:57:45","modified_gmt":"2016-04-22T01:57:45","slug":"limits-to-growth-policies-to-steer-the-economy-away-from-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20140","title":{"rendered":"Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from\u00a0disaster<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>
The earth is a finite place.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n
\n
If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around\u00a015 times larger<\/a>\u00a0than it is now, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). If the global economy then grows by 3% to the end of the century, it will be 60 times larger than now.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

The existing economy is already\u00a0environmentally unsustainable<\/a>. It is utterly implausible to think we can \u201cdecouple\u201d economic growth from environmental impact so significantly, especially since recent decades of extraordinary technological advancement have only increased our impacts on the planet,\u00a0not reduced them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moreover, if you asked politicians whether they\u2019d rather have 4% growth than 3%, they\u2019d all say yes. This makes the growth trajectory outlined above all the more absurd.<\/p>\n

Others have shown why limitless growth is a recipe for\u00a0disaster<\/a>. I\u2019ve argued that living in a\u00a0degrowth economy<\/a>\u00a0would actually increase well-being, both socially and environmentally. But what would it take to get there?<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0new paper<\/a>\u00a0published by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, I look at government policies that could facilitate a planned transition beyond growth \u2013 and I reflect on the huge obstacles lying in the way.<\/p>\n

Measuring progress<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, we need to know what we\u2019re aiming for.<\/p>\n

It is now widely recognised that GDP \u2013 the monetary value of all goods and services produced in an economy \u2013 is a\u00a0deeply flawed<\/a>\u00a0measure of progress.<\/p>\n

GDP can be growing while our environment is being degraded, inequality is\u00a0worsening<\/a>, and social well-being is\u00a0stagnant or falling<\/a>. Better indicators of progress include the\u00a0Genuine Progress Indicator<\/a>\u00a0(GPI), which accounts for a wide range of social, economic and environmental factors.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from\u00a0disaster The earth is a finite place.\u00a0 If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around\u00a015 times larger\u00a0than it is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[203,2327,391,9098,485,13591,8487],"class_list":["post-20140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-degrowth","tag-finite-planet","tag-growth","tag-limitless-growth","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-samuel-alexander","tag-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20140"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20141,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140\/revisions\/20141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}