By Timothée Parrique, Uneven Earth
Is economic growth compatible with ecological sustainability? To answer this question, we need to talk about decoupling. The term ‘decoupling’ refers to the possibility of detaching economic growth from environmental pressures.
By Timothée Parrique, Degrowth.de
The validity of the green growth discourse relies on the assumption of an absolute, permanent, global, large and fast enough decoupling of Gross Domestic Product from all critical environmental pressures. Problem is: there is no empirical evidence for such a decoupling having ever happened.
By Tim Jackson, Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity
It’s probably fitting that Michael Liebreich’s The Secret of Eternal Growth was published so close to Halloween. It’s so full of outlandish bogeymen, it sits perfectly alongside the ghouls and the ghosts of the trick-or-treat season.
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
The path to meaning – and real sustainability - is the opposite; it is through recoupling with nature. Instead of denying that we are an integral part of nature in which we swim, live, mate, laugh, cry and die, we need to embrace that fact.
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
I recently wrote a post criticizing ecomodernism as “magical thinking”. I argued that it ignores key scientific studies on the unviability of absolute decoupling in order to advance an ecologically reckless insistence on growth. Not surprisingly, ecomodernists were not particularly happy about this.
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
This is the thing about ecology, you see: everything is connected. The biomass bone is connected to the biogeochemical bone is connected to the insect bone. And that’s why aggregate material flows are in fact an important indicator of what’s happening to our planet.
By Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's legacy
"Decoupling": are we really so smart that we can do more with less? Apparently not: we can paint things in green, but it is not the same thing. But so is life and happy 2018 to everybody!
By Samuel Alexander, Jonathan Rutherford, Josh Floyd, Online Opinion
In late 2015 the CSIRO released its Australian National Outlook (ANO) Report ('the Report') which outlined 20 future scenarios for Australia, exploring various global and national sustainability challenges...our new paper argues that even the Report's most ambitious "green growth" scenario is incompatible with long-term sustainability and global justice.
By Chris Nelder, The Energy Transition Show
The notion of “decoupling” energy consumption from economic growth has become vogue in policy circles, but how much evidence is there that it’s really happening?
By Brian Davey, Feasta
A major issue in climate economics is whether it is possible to halt the growth in carbon emissions and to achieve, instead, a rapid reduction.
By Ian Sinclair, openDemocracy
Faith in decoupling deflects attention away from the problems that lie at the heart of global environmental (and social) problems...
By Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360
Surprising new statistics show that the world economy is expanding while global carbon emissions remain at the same level. Is it possible that the elusive “decoupling” of emissions and economic growth could be happening?