{"id":64084,"date":"2022-11-09T10:16:32","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:16:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64084"},"modified":"2022-11-09T10:16:32","modified_gmt":"2022-11-09T15:16:32","slug":"the-decoupling-canard-wont-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64084","title":{"rendered":"The decoupling canard won&#8217;t die&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"post-header\">\n<h3 class=\"post-title unpublished\"><a href=\"https:\/\/energyandresilience.substack.com\/p\/the-decoupling-canard-wont-die\">The decoupling canard won&#8217;t die&#8230;<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><strong>aka, &#8216;Green Growth is an oxymoron&#8217;! I keep coming across people contending that decoupling will allow continued economic expansion, whilst reducing emissions. I put together this summary of rebuttals:<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\">\n<div class=\"available-content\">\n<div class=\"body markup\" dir=\"auto\">\n<p>This is a great starting observation from Tim Morgan at Surplus energy economics:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAt the same time, we should dismiss the idea that we can somehow \u201cdecouple\u201d the economy from energy. Fortunately, a quite superb\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/eeb.org\/decoupling-debunked\/\" rel=\"nofollow ugc noopener\">recent report<\/a>\u00a0from the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) has debunked the concept of \u201cdecoupling\u201d so comprehensively that we can defer detailed consideration to a later discussion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur finding is clear\u201d, the EEB report concludes \u2013 \u201cthe decoupling literature is a haystack without a needle\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>There \u2013 political leaders please note \u2013 goes your cherished ambition to deliver \u201csustainable growth\u201d. \u2018Sustainable\u2019 is something to which we can and must aspire. But \u201cgrowth\u201d is not.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>More:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com\/2019\/09\/02\/155-the-art-of-dark-sky-thinking\/\" rel=\"nofollow ugc noopener\">https:\/\/surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com\/2019\/09\/02\/155-the-art-of-dark-sky-thinking\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the direct link to the EEB\u2019s comprehensive debunking of the decoupling canard&#8230;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/eeb.org\/decoupling-debunked\/\" rel=\"nofollow ugc noopener\">https:\/\/eeb.org\/decoupling-debunked\/<\/a>\u00a0summarised as:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Although decoupling is useful and necessary, and has occurred at certain times and places, \u2018green growth\u2019 cannot reduce resource use on anywhere near the scale required to deal with global environmental breakdown and to keep global warming below the target of 1.5\u00b0C above pre-industrial levels, the threshold established as part of the Paris Agreement.<\/p>\n<p>This is the conclusion of \u2018Decoupling debunked: Evidence and arguments against green growth as a sole strategy for sustainability\u2019. Published by the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the report reviews the empirical evidence and theoretical literature to assess the validity of the decoupling hypothesis.<\/p>\n<p>The report, whose lead author is Timoth\u00e9e Parrique of the Centre for Studies and Research in International Development (CERDI), finds that there is no empirical evidence supporting the existence of an absolute, permanent, global, substantial and sufficiently rapid decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures. Absolute decoupling is also highly unlikely to happen in the future, the report concludes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The decoupling canard won&#8217;t die&#8230; aka, &#8216;Green Growth is an oxymoron&#8217;! I keep coming across people contending that decoupling will allow continued economic expansion, whilst reducing emissions. I put together this summary of rebuttals: This is a great starting observation from Tim Morgan at Surplus energy economics: \u201cAt the same time, we should dismiss the [&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":[17328,5478,33360],"class_list":["post-64084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-decoupling","tag-green-growth","tag-nathan-surendran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64084","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=64084"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64085,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64084\/revisions\/64085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}