By Dougald Hine, Bella Caledonia
The need for economic growth is a social construct, not a law of nature, but this construct is the tablecloth on which our current society has been arranged. The question we face, as the 2020s come around, is whether we can pull the tablecloth out fast enough without smashing all the plates and glasses?
By Rufus Jordana, Open Democracy
The Green New Deal pivots on a central lie of continued growth, promising this growth and employment whilst pretending it can magic away the environmental and humanitarian consequences. The result of this is that on all three counts – infinite growth, reliance on fossil fuels, and colonial resource extraction – the Green New Deal is unable to challenge the prevailing order.
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 Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
So here’s what we can do. Let’s not waste time speculating. Let’s impose a legal limit on annual resource use and waste – something that de-growthers have been demanding for a long time – and tighten that limit year-on-year until we are back down to planetary boundaries.
By Jason Hickel, Jason Hickel blog
Ultimately, bringing our civilization back within planetary boundaries is going to require that we liberate ourselves from our dependence on economic growth—starting with rich nations. This might sound scarier than it really is.
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
The common goal of both the private and public sectors is rapid, sustained GDP growth, so the only climate actions that companies or governments are willing to take are those that will not risk slowing wealth accumulation.
By Alnoor Ladha, TruthOut
The hope of green growth is embedded everywhere, from the majority of domestic economic plans to major international policy schemes like the Paris Climate Agreement and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals. By uncritically supporting these policies, we are unwittingly perpetuating the neoliberal fantasy of infinite growth on a finite planet.
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 Roger Boyd, Humanity's Test
The B.P. 2016 Energy Outlook both shows the incredible scale and difficulty in replacing our carbon-dependent infrastructure while providing an optimistic assessment of fossil-fuel supplies, net enertgy and the acceptance of natural gas usage.
By Andre Reichel, Open Democracy
In discussions of the future of economic growth, ‘business as usual’ is not an option.
By Alexander Ač, David Korowicz, Resilience.org
The broad point here is that growth and collapse is a much more fundamental process than capitalism...
By Brian Czech, The Daly News
Now, the good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue [climate change] while driving strong economic growth.” With that sentence from his State of the Union address, President Obama capitulated to paltry cynicism. Alas, he will not be the president who finally comes clean on the trade-off between economic growth and environmental protection. Obama is now committed to win-win, green-growth rhetoric.