Prosperity without growth

Posted by A.L. on 27 February 2010 | 1 Comments

Tags: prosperity without growth, sustainability

If there is one thing that is completely unarguable about how the future will need to pan out, IF we are going to a viable species in the long-term, it is that we will move beyond a paradigm for living that REQUIRES incessant growth. We KNOW that this change must come to pass because infinite growth on a finite planet, with finite resources, is impossible.  It is arguably essential to maintain economic growth while the population is growing, but BOTH will have to stabilise, if we are to be sustainable.

Here is a publication that everyone should read:

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/prosperity_without_growth_report.pdf

Everyone should read it because it is all very well saying that we need to move beyond a growth-based paradigm, but we must then spell out HOW this is going to work. The above document goes some way to answering that question. Here is a quote from the Foreword to the document:

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"Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

This extraordinary ramping up of global economic activity has no historical precedent. It’s totally at odds with our scientific knowledge of the finite resource base and the fragile ecology on which we depend for survival. And it has already been accompanied by the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems.

For the most part, we avoid the stark reality of these numbers. The default assumption is that– financial crises aside – growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries, where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our wellbeing.

The reasons for this collective blindness are easy enough to find. The modern economy is structurally reliant on economic growth for its stability. When growth falters – as it has done recently – politicians panic. Businesses struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and sometimes their homes. A spiral of recession looms. Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must. The myth of growth has failed us. It has failed the two billion people who still live on less than $2 a day. It has failed the fragile ecological systems on which we depend for survival. It has failed, spectacularly, in its own terms, to provide economic stability and secure people’s livelihoods."

Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner, Sustainable Development Commission, March 2009

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