{"id":65713,"date":"2023-08-31T06:05:22","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T11:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65713"},"modified":"2023-08-31T06:05:22","modified_gmt":"2023-08-31T11:05:22","slug":"critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-its-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologists-perspective-its-inevitable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=65713","title":{"rendered":"Critics of \u2018degrowth\u2019 economics say it\u2019s unworkable \u2013 but from an ecologist\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s\u00a0inevitable"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Critics of \u2018degrowth\u2019 economics say it\u2019s unworkable \u2013 but from an ecologist\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s inevitable<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
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You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed\u00a0Earth overshoot day<\/a>, when humanity\u2019s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually.<\/p>\n

Many economists\u00a0criticising<\/a>\u00a0the developing\u00a0degrowth movement<\/a>\u00a0fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth\u2019s biophysical limits.<\/p>\n

Ecologists on the other hand see the\u00a0human economy as a subset of the biosphere<\/a>. Their perspective highlights the urgency with which we need to reduce our demands on the biosphere to avoid a disastrous ecological collapse, with consequences for us and all other species.<\/p>\n

Many degrowth scholars (as well as critics) focus on features of capitalism as the cause of this ecological overshoot. But while capitalism may be problematic, many civilisations destroyed ecosystems to the point of\u00a0collapse<\/a> long before it became our dominant economic model.<\/p>\n

Capitalism, powered by the availability of cheap and abundant fossil energy, has indeed resulted in unprecedented and global biosphere disruption. But the direct cause remains the excessive volume and speed with which resources are extracted and wastes returned to the environment.<\/p>\n

From an ecologist\u2019s perspective, degrowth is inevitable on our current trajectory.<\/p>\n

Carrying capacity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ecology tells us that many species overshoot their environment\u2019s carrying capacity if they have\u00a0temporary access to an unusually high level of resources<\/a>. Overshoot declines when those resources return to more stable levels. This often involves large-scale starvation and die-offs as populations adjust.<\/p>\n

Access to fossil fuels has allowed us to temporarily overshoot biophysical limits. This lifted our population and demands on the biosphere past the level it can safely absorb. Barring a planned reduction of those biosphere demands, we will experience the same \u201cadjustments\u201d as other species.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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

Critics of \u2018degrowth\u2019 economics say it\u2019s unworkable \u2013 but from an ecologist\u2019s perspective, it\u2019s inevitable You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed\u00a0Earth overshoot day, when humanity\u2019s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually. Many economists\u00a0criticising\u00a0the developing\u00a0degrowth movement\u00a0fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth\u2019s biophysical […]<\/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":[203,234,31277],"class_list":["post-65713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-degrowth","tag-ecology","tag-mike-joy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65713","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=65713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65714,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65713\/revisions\/65714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}