{"id":59608,"date":"2021-09-30T18:25:47","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T23:25:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59608"},"modified":"2021-09-30T18:25:47","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T23:25:47","slug":"green-growth-doesnt-exist-less-of-everything-is-the-only-way-to-avert-catastrophe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=59608","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Green growth\u2019 doesn\u2019t exist \u2013 less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u2018Green growth\u2019 doesn\u2019t exist \u2013 less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
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It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems.\u2019 A dead North Atlantic right whale washed up on a beach in New Brunswick, Canada.<\/span> Photograph: Nathan Klima\/Boston Globe\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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T<\/span><\/span>here is a box labelled \u201cclimate\u201d, in which politicians discuss the climate crisis. There is a box named \u201cbiodiversity\u201d, in which they discuss the biodiversity crisis. There are other boxes, such as pollution, deforestation, overfishing and soil loss, gathering dust in our planet\u2019s lost property department. But they all contain aspects of one crisis that we have divided up to make it comprehensible. The categories the human brain creates to make sense of its surroundings are not, as Immanuel Kant observed, the \u201cthing-in-itself\u201d. They describe\u00a0artefacts of our perceptions<\/a>\u00a0rather than the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nature recognises no such divisions. As Earth systems are assaulted by everything at once, each source of stress compounds the others.<\/p>\n

Take the\u00a0situation of the North Atlantic right whale<\/a>, whose population recovered a little when whaling ceased, but is now slumping again:\u00a0fewer than 95 females<\/a> of breeding age remain. The immediate reasons for this decline are mostly deaths and injuries caused when whales are hit by ships or tangled in fishing gear. But they\u2019ve become more vulnerable to these impacts because they\u2019ve had to shift along the eastern seaboard of North America into busy waters.<\/p>\n

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\"Cutting<\/div>\n
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Race to the bottom: the disastrous, blindfolded rush to mine the deep sea<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Their main prey, a small swimming crustacean called\u00a0Calanus finmarchicus<\/em>, is moving north at a rate of 8km a year, because\u00a0the sea is heating<\/a>…<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2018Green growth\u2019 doesn\u2019t exist \u2013 less of everything is the only way to avert catastrophe It is simply not possible to carry on at the current level of economic activity without destroying the environment \u2018Combined impacts are laying waste to entire living systems.\u2019 A dead North Atlantic right whale washed up on a beach in […]<\/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":[141,6112,5478,391,6917],"class_list":["post-59608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-george-monbiot","tag-green-growth","tag-growth","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59608","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=59608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59609,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59608\/revisions\/59609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}