{"id":60579,"date":"2021-11-22T07:09:54","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60579"},"modified":"2021-11-22T07:09:54","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:09:54","slug":"the-end-of-growth-ten-years-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=60579","title":{"rendered":"The End of Growth: ten years after"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"post-image\">\n<div class=\"fimg-wrapper fimg-cl\">\n<div class=\"featured-image\">\n<div class=\"fimg-inner\">\n<div class=\"vm-wrapper\">\n<div class=\"vm-middle\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2021-11-21\/the-end-of-growth-ten-years-after\/?fbclid=IwAR3nCFFB5QmURDvfzAucDwLLTlSIqpKWgKaieDFina-KljPGG2-jwQSdrno\">The End of Growth: ten years after<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"backstretch\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/Homeless_RESIZED.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"post-content\">Fifty years ago the authors of the groundbreaking book\u00a0<u><a href=\"https:\/\/www.clubofrome.org\/publication\/the-limits-to-growth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>The Limits to Growth<\/i><\/a><\/u>\u00a0showed that, in any of a series of computer-generated scenarios, world economic growth would end sometime during the 21<sup>st<\/sup>\u00a0century. Using simple math and logic, they pointed out that growth in any material input or output cannot continue indefinitely within a finite system. Since the Earth is a finite system, the effort to perpetually grow human economies (which, by their very nature, extract resources and produce wastes) is doomed to eventual failure, leading to significant declines in resources, industrial output, food production, and population. Despite the fact that the book was a bestseller and its conclusions were well supported, world political and business leaders ignored it and persevered in their efforts to expand resource extraction, agriculture, and manufacturing.<\/p>\n<p>Around the year 2010, it appeared to me that signs of growth\u2019s slowing and approaching reversal were accumulating to the point that a new book on the subject might be timely and helpful.\u00a0<u><a href=\"https:\/\/richardheinberg.com\/bookshelf\/the-end-of-growth-book\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><i>The End of Growth<\/i><\/a><\/u><i>\u00a0<\/i>was published in 2011<i>,\u00a0<\/i>and attracted healthy sales but few reviews.<\/p>\n<p>Today, indications of impending economic stagnation and retrenchment are arguably stronger still. There will be many articles this semicentennial anniversary year discussing the 1972\u00a0<i>Limits to Growth<\/i>\u00a0study; I thought it might also be informative to look back at my book, reflecting on whether its message is useful today.<\/p>\n<p>In the book, I argued that modern economic growth is largely attributable to fossil fuels. Energy is essential to all activity, and the availability of vast amounts of energy from tens of millions of years\u2019 worth of ancient sunlight, captured and transformed by natural processes into portable and storable fuels, has made it possible to speed up and expand nearly every human enterprise&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The End of Growth: ten years after Fifty years ago the authors of the groundbreaking book\u00a0The Limits to Growth\u00a0showed that, in any of a series of computer-generated scenarios, world economic growth would end sometime during the 21st\u00a0century. Using simple math and logic, they pointed out that growth in any material input or output cannot continue [&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":[2,3,4],"tags":[7160,391,485,6665,1081],"class_list":["post-60579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-end-of-growth","tag-growth","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-resilience-org","tag-richard-heinberg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60579","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=60579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60580,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60579\/revisions\/60580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}