A Dozen Years of Economic Thumb Twiddling

About a dozen years ago, I wrote a book (with Dan O’Neill) titled Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. Around the same time, my friend and colleague at Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg wrote his book, The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. Both books struck a chord at the time of publication, which came on the heels of the global financial crisis of 2008. As environmentalists and observers of economic trends, both Richard and I were hopeful that growth (along with associated problems, such as global warming, resource depletion, declining biodiversity, and wealth inequality) had reached an inflection point, that nations of the world would reconfigure their primary economic pursuit from getting bigger to getting better. Alas, it was not to be.

In this conversation, Richard and I discuss the history of economic growth, the rise of ecological economics, what did and did NOT happen in the aftermath of the economic turmoil of 2008, and what it will take to make a transition from an ill-advised obsession with growth to embracing wellbeing and a right-sized economy. Despite the lack of progress a dozen years ago, there’s still hope for cultivating a broad degrowth movement and establishing an economy that meets people’s needs without undermining the life-support systems of the planet.