{"id":28194,"date":"2017-11-22T07:02:26","date_gmt":"2017-11-22T12:02:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28194"},"modified":"2017-11-22T07:02:26","modified_gmt":"2017-11-22T12:02:26","slug":"averting-the-apocalypse-lessons-from-costa-rica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28194","title":{"rendered":"Averting the apocalypse: lessons from Costa Rica"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Averting the apocalypse: lessons from Costa Rica<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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\"Costa<\/a>Earlier this summer, a paper published in the journal Nature<\/a> captured headlines with a rather bleak forecast. Our chances of keeping global warming below the 2C danger threshold are very, very small: only about 5%. The reason, according to the paper\u2019s authors, is that the cuts we\u2019re making to greenhouse gas emissions are being cancelled out by economic growth.<\/p>\n

In the coming decades, we\u2019ll be able to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy by about 1.9% per year, if we make heavy investments in clean energy and efficient technology. That\u2019s a lot. But as long as the economy keeps growing by more than that, total emissions are still going to rise. Right now we\u2019re ratcheting up global GDP by 3% per year, which means we\u2019re headed for trouble.<\/p>\n

If we want to have any hope of averting catastrophe, we\u2019re going to have to do something about our addiction to growth. This is tricky, because GDP growth is the main policy objective of virtually every government on the planet. It lies at the heart of everything we\u2019ve been told to believe about how the economy should work: that GDP growth is good, that it\u2019s essential to progress, and that if we want to improve human wellbeing and eradicate poverty around the world, we need more of it. It\u2019s a powerful narrative. But is it true?<\/p>\n

Maybe not. Take Costa Rica. A beautiful Central American country known for its lush rainforests and stunning beaches, Costa Rica proves that achieving high levels of human wellbeing has very little to do with GDP and almost everything to do with something very different.<\/p>\n

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

Averting the apocalypse: lessons from Costa Rica Earlier this summer, a paper published in the journal Nature captured headlines with a rather bleak forecast. Our chances of keeping global warming below the 2C danger threshold are very, very small: only about 5%. The reason, according to the paper\u2019s authors, is that the cuts we\u2019re making […]<\/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":[2,4],"tags":[28,16736,353,369,1115,391,17122,1789],"class_list":["post-28194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-apocalypse","tag-costa-rica","tag-gdp","tag-global-warming","tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions","tag-growth","tag-jason-hickel","tag-nature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28194","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=28194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28195,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28194\/revisions\/28195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}