By Katy Shields, Ugo Bardi, The Seneca Effect
At the time of Seneca, rhetoric was perhaps the main skill of a man of culture: the capability of debating was valued and practiced.
By Richard Heinberg, Common Dreams
Why wait for collapse? Repurposing growth capital now could help unwind the doomsday machine sooner rather than later.
By Brian Davey, Feasta
Promoting economic growth is unethical because economic activity has overshot the carrying capacity of the biosphere and is degrading the ecological system.
By R. Strand, Z. Kovacic, S. Funtowicz, L. Benini, A. Jesus, European Environment Agency
Economic growth is closely linked to increases in production, consumption and resource use and has detrimental effects on the natural environment and human health.
By Lisi Krall, Resilience.org
We should face reality: The other-than-human-world now has become almost entirely eclipsed by an unassailable “superorganism”—us, the human species—that continues to expand in evermore destructive fashion.
By Carey W. King, Resilience.org
In the context of the energy and economic narratives, who needs more willpower? Do our political leaders need “political will” to constrain the choices for both public and private energy company investments?
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
My milk package, the electric cars, agriculture land use and the wood saving stoves are all examples showing why overall reduction in resources use or emissions (absolute decoupling) through substitution and efficiency is a pipe dream in a growth economy.
By Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
For years, financial institutions and governments have been focused on the idea of ‘decoupling’ GDP growth from resource use. This has been driven by the recognition that to stay within the ‘safe limit’ of 2 degrees Celsius, we have to dramatically reduce our material consumption.
By Jason Hickel, New Internationalist
We can end poverty, right now, without any additional aggregate economic growth at all. The key here is to recognize that we don’t live in a poor world. On the contrary, we live in an incredibly rich world. Global poverty is a product not of any actual scarcity, but rather of the systematic creation of artificial scarcity.
By Mark H. Burton, Steady-State Manchester
Positive Money is to be commended for its efforts in helping to bring the deep and systemic problem of Economic Growth to the public eye. However, while agreeing with this broad orientation, it is worth taking a close look at the report’s policy proposals and at the economic theory behind them.
By Sam Bliss, Uneven Earth
Once free from the efficiency mindset, we see that setting legal limits is not the only solution to the Jevons phenomenon. If efficiency makes growth, maybe inefficiency makes degrowth.
By Julia Steinberger, Open Democracy
This fundamental question is the one I ask myself in my research, as an ecological economist. What are the physical things (like energy, materials, infrastructure and so on) we need to live well? To answer it, we must understand what we truly need, and how satisfying our needs connects to well-being.