{"id":62405,"date":"2022-04-06T07:02:11","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T12:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62405"},"modified":"2022-04-06T07:02:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-06T12:02:11","slug":"life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=62405","title":{"rendered":"Life in a \u2018degrowth\u2019 economy, and why you might actually enjoy it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Life in a \u2018degrowth\u2019 economy, and why you might actually enjoy it<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Time to get off the economic growth train?\u00a0Sergey Nivens\/Shutterstock<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy can\u2019t grow for ever.<\/p>\n

This week\u2019s\u00a0Addicted to Growth<\/a>\u00a0conference in Sydney is exploring how to move beyond growth economics and towards a \u201csteady-state\u201d economy.<\/p>\n

But what is a steady-state economy? Why it is it desirable or necessary? And what would it be like to live in?<\/p>\n

The global predicament<\/strong><\/p>\n

We used to live on a planet that was relatively empty of humans; today it is full to overflowing, with more people consuming more resources. We would need\u00a0one and a half Earths<\/a> to sustain the existing economy into the future. Every year this ecological overshoot continues, the foundations of our existence, and that of other species, are undermined.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there are great multitudes around the world who are, by any humane standard, under-consuming, and the humanitarian challenge of eliminating global poverty is likely to increase the burden on ecosystems still further.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the population is set to hit\u00a011 billion<\/a>\u00a0this century. Despite this, the richest nations still seek to grow their economies without apparent limit.<\/p>\n

Like a snake eating its own tail, our growth-orientated civilisation suffers from the delusion that there are no environmental\u00a0limits to growth<\/a>. But rethinking growth in an age of limits cannot be avoided. The only question is whether it will be by design or disaster.<\/p>\n

Degrowth to a steady-state economy<\/strong><\/p>\n

The idea of the steady-state economy presents us with an alternative. This term is somewhat misleading, however, because it suggests that we simply need to maintain the size of the existing economy and stop seeking further growth.<\/p>\n

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

Life in a \u2018degrowth\u2019 economy, and why you might actually enjoy it Time to get off the economic growth train?\u00a0Sergey Nivens\/Shutterstock What does genuine economic progress look like? The orthodox answer is that a bigger economy is always better, but this idea is increasingly strained by the knowledge that, on a finite planet, the economy […]<\/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],"tags":[17183,203,22093,485,13591,7928],"class_list":["post-62405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-biophysical-limits","tag-degrowth","tag-ecological-overshoot","tag-limits-to-growth","tag-samuel-alexander","tag-steady-state-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62405","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=62405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62406,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62405\/revisions\/62406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}