{"id":48605,"date":"2019-09-22T16:42:43","date_gmt":"2019-09-22T21:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48605"},"modified":"2019-09-22T16:42:45","modified_gmt":"2019-09-22T21:42:45","slug":"the-radical-plan-to-save-the-planet-by-working-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=48605","title":{"rendered":"The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_ca\/article\/bj9yjq\/the-radical-plan-to-save-the-planet-by-working-less\">The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being. But is it a utopian fantasy?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 1972, a team at MIT published<a href=\"http:\/\/www.donellameadows.org\/wp-content\/userfiles\/Limits-to-Growth-digital-scan-version.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;<em>The Limits to Growth<\/em><\/a>, a report that predicted what would happen to human civilization as the economy and population continued to grow. What their computer simulation found was pretty straightforward: On a planet of finite resources, infinite exponential growth isn\u2019t possible. Eventually, non-renewable resources, like oil, would run out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Historically, we have considered growth a positive thing, synonymous with job security and prosperity. Since World War II, the gross domestic product (GDP) measure\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/foreignpolicy.com\/2011\/01\/03\/gdp-a-brief-history\/\" target=\"_blank\">has been used\u00a0<\/a>as \u201cthe ultimate measure of a country\u2019s overall welfare.\u201d One of John F. Kennedy\u2019s staff economists, Arthur Okun, theorized that for every 3-point rise in GDP, unemployment would fall a percentage point\u2014one reason why presidential campaigns fixate on the measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But growth has led to other problems, such as the warming of the planet due to<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/environment\/datablog\/2017\/jan\/19\/carbon-countdown-clock-how-much-of-the-worlds-carbon-budget-have-we-spent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">&nbsp;carbon emissions<\/a>, and the extreme weather and loss of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en_us\/article\/evyz8p\/1-million-species-are-threatened-with-extinction-thanks-to-humans-un-report-says\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">biodiversity<\/a>and agriculture that comes along with that. Consequently some activists, researchers, and policy makers are questioning the dogma of growth as good. This skepticism has led to the degrowth movement, which says the growth of the economy is inextricably tied to an increase in carbon emissions. It calls for a dramatic reduction in energy and material use, which would inevitably shrink GDP.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gp.org\/green_new_deal\" target=\"_blank\">Green New Deal<\/a>, popularized by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seeks to decrease carbon by growing the renewable energy industry. But the degrowth movement believes we need to take this further, by designing a social upheaval that disentangles the idea of progress and economic growth once and for all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Radical Plan to Save the Planet by Working Less The degrowth movement wants to intentionally shrink the economy to address climate change, and create lives with less stuff, less work, and better well-being. But is it a utopian fantasy? In 1972, a team at MIT published&nbsp;The Limits to Growth, a report that predicted what [&hellip;]<\/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":[4,7],"tags":[113,203,1647,27226,27227],"class_list":["post-48605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-degrowth","tag-finite-resources","tag-shayla-love","tag-vice-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48605","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=48605"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48606,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48605\/revisions\/48606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}