{"id":40217,"date":"2018-11-07T08:17:55","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T13:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40217"},"modified":"2018-11-07T08:17:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T13:17:55","slug":"the-secret-of-eternal-growth-its-wishful-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40217","title":{"rendered":"The Secret of Eternal Growth? It\u2019s Wishful Thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Secret of Eternal Growth? It\u2019s Wishful Thinking<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I want to believe in eternal economic growth. Given what humanity is facing with climate change and other consequences of our collective consumption, it must be awfully comforting to have faith in a cornucopian future where no one ever goes wanting. Especially if all we have to do is more of the same, sticking to capitalism\u2019s exploitative playbook. I used to have that faith. I was a worshipper of technological progress and its potential to overcome all the social and environmental problems that accompany exponentially increasing population and consumption. I also used to believe in the Easter Bunny. Unlike Michael Liebreich (author of \u201cThe Secret of Eternal Growth,\u201d<\/a> the article I\u2019m rebutting), however, I paid enough attention to the evidence to put aside such fantasies.<\/p>\n

I intend to provide a blow-by-blow analysis of Liebreich\u2019s contentions, but I feel compelled to start with a gem near the end of his article. In a one-sentence paragraph that summarizes his thesis, he writes, \u201cThe bottom line here is that the world\u2019s most feted scientists and economists have shown that economic growth is consistent with environmental protection and the mitigation of climate change.\u201d Here\u2019s a small point: his use of a financial metaphor (\u201cbottom line\u201d) may reveal something about how much the culture of money influences his thinking. But here\u2019s the bigger point. Really?!? What the hell is he talking about?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with his claim about scientists. It\u2019s a safe bet he hasn\u2019t read the World Scientists\u2019 Warning to Humanity<\/a><\/em>. This article appeared in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience <\/em>in December 2017. In the article, which was endorsed by more than 15,000 scientists at the time it was published, the authors write, \u201cWe are jeopardizing our future by not reining in our intense but geographically and demographically uneven material consumption and by not perceiving continued rapid population growth as a primary driver behind many ecological and even societal threats.\u201d<\/p>\n

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

The Secret of Eternal Growth? It\u2019s Wishful Thinking I want to believe in eternal economic growth. Given what humanity is facing with climate change and other consequences of our collective consumption, it must be awfully comforting to have faith in a cornucopian future where no one ever goes wanting. Especially if all we have to […]<\/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":[2,4,7],"tags":[111,141,162,22826,2328,4514,6665,22837,786,12429],"class_list":["post-40217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-capitalism","tag-climate-change","tag-consumption","tag-eternal-growth","tag-infinite-growth","tag-perpetual-growth","tag-resilience-org","tag-rob-dietz","tag-technology","tag-wishful-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40217","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=40217"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40218,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40217\/revisions\/40218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}