{"id":58854,"date":"2021-08-01T07:26:17","date_gmt":"2021-08-01T12:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58854"},"modified":"2021-08-01T07:26:17","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T12:26:17","slug":"the-necessary-climate-solution-no-one-is-talking-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58854","title":{"rendered":"The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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For all the talk of renewable energy, electric vehicles and plant-based diets, there\u2019s a gaping hole in the way we\u2019re trying to solve accelerating climate change.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We will not stay below 2\u00b0C of warming while pursuing economic\u00a0growth\u00a0\u2013 yet barely anyone talks about it.<\/p>\n

Since the end of World War II Gross Domestic Product (GDP)\u00a0growth\u00a0has been\u00a0the<\/b><\/i>\u00a0metric of human prosperity in Western nations \u2013 the idea being that if the productivity of the economy increases so will the wellbeing of the people within that economy. And for a while that was the case \u2013 but since the 1970\u2019s\u00a0increases in GDP have, on average, failed to translate into increases in\u00a0wellbeing<\/u><\/a>\u00a0and happiness.<\/p>\n

It is not surprising. Research has shown that once a certain GDP threshold, or level of wellbeing, has been met people gain little from consuming more \u2018stuff\u2019 \u2013 a necessary requirement for continuous GDP\u00a0growth.<\/p>\n

Robert F Kennedy eloquently summed up the inadequacy of GDP as a metric of wellbeing at a\u00a0speech<\/u><\/a>\u00a0he gave in 1968:<\/p>\n

[t]he gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.<\/p>\n

It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What\u2019s more, GDP has never been, and can\u2019t be, decoupled from material footprint, including energy[i]<\/u><\/a>. This means we cannot roll out renewable energy fast enough to meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement \u2013 to keep warming below\u00a02\u00b0C\u00a0\u2013 if we continue growing our economy.<\/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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Necessary Climate Solution No-one is Talking About For all the talk of renewable energy, electric vehicles and plant-based diets, there\u2019s a gaping hole in the way we\u2019re trying to solve accelerating climate change. We will not stay below 2\u00b0C of warming while pursuing economic\u00a0growth\u00a0\u2013 yet barely anyone talks about it. Since the end of […]<\/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":[2,3,4,7],"tags":[141,31572,203,22093,31571,286,353,1115,4549,391,769],"class_list":["post-58854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-solutions","tag-degrowth","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-erin-remblance","tag-exponential-growth","tag-gdp","tag-greenhouse-gas-emissions","tag-gross-domestic-product","tag-growth","tag-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58854","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=58854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}