Sally Strange
The Lancet says: #DEGROWTH NOW!
"The central idea of post-growth is to replace the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
Sally Strange
Some choice quotes from new Lancet study on #degrowth or #PostGrowth and planetary health:
"Doughnut, wellbeing, and steady-state economics generally position their proposals within the current capitalist system, whereas degrowth is critical of the possibilities of an egalitarian slowdown within capitalism given that capitalist competition is structurally geared towards growth. Degrowth therefore emphasises the need for a planned, democratic transformation of the economic system to drastically reduce ecological impact and inequality and improve wellbeing. Degrowth, similarly to steady-state economics, regards a lower GDP as a probable outcome of efforts to substantially reduce resource use. Reducing GDP is not a goal of these approaches, however, but, it is seen as something that economies need to be made resilient to. The Doughnut and wellbeing approaches are more agnostic about GDP growth, but still view it as a poor measure of progress. Post-growth is plural and open to all these perspectives. All approaches converge on the need for qualitative improvement without relying on quantitative growth, and on selectively decreasing the production of less necessary and more damaging goods and services, while increasing beneficial ones."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
Sally Strange
Continuing to read the new Lancet study on degrowth/post-growth ideas!
They have a table listing post-growth oriented policies, their good points, and the critiques against them.
-Universal basic income
-work time reduction
-universal basic services
-job guarantee
-maximum income
-wealth tax
-public money
-replacing GDP
-cap and adapt
-green new deal
-carbon taxes or dividends
Sally Strange
But isn't lack of growth destabilizing?
"Economic research has shown that the desired (or optimal) rate of consumption growth might decline to close to zero if (environmental) risks associated with new technologies and people's preferences for safety are taken into account. From a post-growth perspective, the problem then is not that growth might be coming to an end, but rather that, given that economic and political systems are dependent on growth for their stability, stagnation under capitalism poses substantial risks to institutional stability. How to prosper without growth therefore becomes a crucial question."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
Sally Strange
On human wellbeing vs GDP:
"The social limits hypothesis holds that there is a limit to the extent that growth improves subjective wellbeing, because humans adapt to higher levels of income, and compare themselves to others who are also getting richer, or because additional production goes towards zero-sum status goods. The social cost hypothesis is that above a certain level of GDP, the costs of growth (eg, congestion, pollution, mental health, social upheaval) might offset its wellbeing benefits.90 Growth is said to become uneconomic."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
Sally Strange
"Decoupling"? It's possible but extremely unlikely (authors being politic here); "the post-growth field suggests taking a precautionary approach, given the historical record and the rapid narrowing of the window to prevent ecological breakdown. Post-growth, it should be emphasised, does not state that decoupling economic activity from emissions and getting to net zero emissions is impossible, just that it is made harder by economic growth. For energy and material use, which can only be reduced and never brought to zero, the necessary reductions are easier to achieve with post-growth."
#DeGrowth #PostGrowth #Decoupling
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
Sally Strange
fuck William Nordhaus
Sally Strange
Revisiting "Limits To Growth" on its 50th anniversary:
"Scientists have also sought to assess the validity of the Limits to Growth model by looking at how well it fits historical trends since its publication. Previous studies have explored how the various runs of the Limits to Growth model compare with actual trends and suggest that the world is most closely tracking the Double Resources scenario, which differs from the Standard Run in its assumption that the initial stock of non-renewable resources is twice as large as the Standard Run resource stock (figure 1). In this scenario, collapse occurs later and is driven not by scarcity of non-renewable resources (ie, a source limit), as in the Standard Run, but by persistent pollution and its impact on ecosystem stability (ie, a sink limit, otherwise known as a regenerative capacity limit)."
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(24)00310-3/fulltext
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