{"id":42745,"date":"2019-01-14T10:44:05","date_gmt":"2019-01-14T15:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42745"},"modified":"2019-01-14T10:44:05","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T15:44:05","slug":"opinion-sooner-or-later-we-have-to-stop-economic-growth-and-well-be-better-for-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42745","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: Sooner or Later, We Have to Stop Economic Growth–And We’ll Be Better For It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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OPINION: SOONER OR LATER, WE HAVE TO STOP ECONOMIC GROWTH \u2014 AND WE\u2019LL BE BETTER FOR IT<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
The end of growth will come one day, perhaps very soon, whether we\u2019re ready or not. If we plan for and manage it, we could well wind up with greater well-being.<\/div>\n
\"Intro<\/div>\n
Illustration by Kelsey King<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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January 8, 2019 \u2014 <\/span>Both the U.S. economy and the global economy have expanded dramatically in the past century, as have life expectancies and material progress. Economists raised in this period of plenty assume that growth is good, necessary even, and should continue forever and ever without end, amen. Growth delivers jobs, returns on investment and higher tax revenues. What\u2019s not to like? We\u2019ve gotten so accustomed to growth that governments, corporations and banks now depend on it. It\u2019s no exaggeration to say that we\u2019re collectively addicted to growth.<\/p>\n

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The trouble is, a bigger economy uses more stuff than a smaller one, and we happen to live on a finite planet. So, an end to growth is inevitable. Ending growth is also desirable if we want to leave some stuff (minerals, forests, biodiversity and stable climate) for our kids and their kids. Further, if growth is meant to have anything to do with increasing quality of life, there is plenty of evidence to suggest it has passed the point of diminishing returns: Even though the U.S. economy is\u00a05.5 times bigger now<\/a>\u00a0than it was in 1960 (in terms of real GDP), America is losing ground on its happiness index<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So how do we stop growth without making life miserable \u2014 and maybe even making it better?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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To start with, there are two strategies that many people already agree on. We should substitute good consumption for bad, for example using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OPINION: SOONER OR LATER, WE HAVE TO STOP ECONOMIC GROWTH \u2014 AND WE\u2019LL BE BETTER FOR IT The end of growth will come one day, perhaps very soon, whether we\u2019re ready or not. If we plan for and manage it, we could well wind up with greater well-being. Illustration by Kelsey King January 8, 2019 […]<\/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":[240,6513,2327,353,1081],"class_list":["post-42745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-economic-growth","tag-ensia","tag-finite-planet","tag-gdp","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42745","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=42745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42746,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42745\/revisions\/42746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}