{"id":40108,"date":"2018-11-03T12:28:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T17:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40108"},"modified":"2018-11-03T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T17:28:11","slug":"heres-a-simple-solution-to-the-growth-de-growth-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40108","title":{"rendered":"Here’s a Simple Solution to the Growth\/De-Growth Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HERE’S A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE GROWTH\/DE-GROWTH DEBATE<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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A number of high-profile economists \u2013 people like Carlota Perez and Michael Liebreich \u2013 have recently come out swinging in favor of \u201cgreen growth\u201d theory, trying to assuage mounting public concerns about the fact that climate change and ecological breakdown are being driven by capitalist growth.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting about these interventions is that they explicitly pit themselves against their opposite \u2013 the idea of de-growth.\u00a0 Even just a year or two ago, de-growth wouldn\u2019t have been part of the conversation.\u00a0 Once the province of ecological economists, it\u2019s now gaining more mainstream attention as the evidence against growth mounts \u2013 and orthodox economists have no choice but to reckon with it.<\/p>\n

But as they try to edge their way around certain prickly facts, their arguments get stranger and stranger.<\/p>\n

Green growth theory relies on the assumption that GDP growth can be permanently and absolutely decoupled from resource use and emissions, and at a pace that\u2019s fast enough to reverse ecological breakdown and keep us under 1.5 degrees, so that GDP can continue growing forever while environmental impacts decline.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s just one problem.\u00a0 There\u2019s no evidence that this is feasible.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with emissions. \u00a0Fortunately, we know that GDP can be absolutely decoupled from emissions.\u00a0 The real question is whether we can decarbonize fast enough to stay under 1.5 degrees, without relying on fanciful negative emissions technologies.\u00a0 The answer, sadly, is no<\/a>.\u00a0 If we carry on with growth as usual, we need to decarbonize at a rate of 11% per year. That\u2019s more than five times faster than the historic rate of decarbonization and about three times faster than what scientists project is possible, even under highly optimistic conditions.<\/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":"

HERE’S A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO THE GROWTH\/DE-GROWTH DEBATE A number of high-profile economists \u2013 people like Carlota Perez and Michael Liebreich \u2013 have recently come out swinging in favor of \u201cgreen growth\u201d theory, trying to assuage mounting public concerns about the fact that climate change and ecological breakdown are being driven by capitalist growth. What\u2019s […]<\/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":[22766,113,141,203,22765,353,5478,4549,391,17122],"class_list":["post-40108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-survival-2","tag-capitalist-growth","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-degrowth","tag-ecological-breakdown","tag-gdp","tag-green-growth","tag-gross-domestic-product","tag-growth","tag-jason-hickel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40108","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=40108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40109,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40108\/revisions\/40109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}