{"id":38367,"date":"2018-09-27T06:29:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T11:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38367"},"modified":"2018-09-27T06:29:25","modified_gmt":"2018-09-27T11:29:25","slug":"soothing-noah-smiths-fears-about-a-post-growth-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=38367","title":{"rendered":"Soothing Noah Smith’s Fears About a Post-Growth World"},"content":{"rendered":"
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SOOTHING NOAH SMITH\u2019S FEARS ABOUT A POST-GROWTH WORLD<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Last week Foreign Policy<\/em> published an article I wrote titled \u201cWhy growth can\u2019t be green<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 It stirred a lively online discussion \u2013 and of course attracted dissenters.\u00a0 Among them was one Noah Smith, who penned a critical op-ed in Bloomberg.\u00a0 You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I wrote to Noah and asked whether he would let me respond on the same platform, where he contributes a regular column.\u00a0 To my delight, he agreed.\u00a0 So I pitched to his editor, copying Noah.\u00a0 But I received no response.\u00a0 Perhaps he\u2019s less interested in the debate than he initially let on.\u00a0 Poor form, by my lights \u2013 but oh well.\u00a0 Here are some of the points I would have made.<\/p>\n

1. It\u2019s about resource use, not energy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The main problem with Noah\u2019s piece is that the whole thing is based on either awkward confusion or intentional sleight of hand.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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<\/a>).\u00a0 The reason is simple: the rate of decoupling is outstripped by the normal rate of GDP growth, even in high-efficiency scenarios.\u00a0 To make matters worse, there are physical limits <\/a>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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SOOTHING NOAH SMITH\u2019S FEARS ABOUT A POST-GROWTH WORLD Last week Foreign Policy published an article I wrote titled \u201cWhy growth can\u2019t be green.\u201d\u00a0 It stirred a lively online discussion \u2013 and of course attracted dissenters.\u00a0 Among them was one Noah Smith, who penned a critical op-ed in Bloomberg.\u00a0 You can read it here. I wrote […]<\/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":[3,4,7],"tags":[326,21936,21937,20756,21935],"class_list":["post-38367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-foreign-policy","tag-noah-smith","tag-post-growth-world","tag-resource-use","tag-why-growth-cant-be-green"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38367","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=38367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38368,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38367\/revisions\/38368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}