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Our enemy might be an economic system based on growth that gives critical political power to groups of people that don't actually care about decreasing carbon e
by abyssin 7y ago
Our enemy might be an economic system based on growth that gives critical political power to groups of people that don't actually care about decreasing carbon emissions.
True, economic growth makes everyone richer. But if we don't find a way to both get economic growth and keep the planet in a liveable state, losing economic growth sounds like a better option than destroying the conditions for human life.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoMy main fear here is that by fixating on economic growth being bad, we might wind up killing the very engine that gives us technologies to deal with climate change and fix the damage already done. That's why I urge to decompose "economic growth" into pieces, and focus on addressing the parts that are causing trouble.
- abyssin 7y agoThis is a fair point. But couldn't there be a different engine to technological progress?
- TeMPOraL 7y agoNot sure. By their very nature, new technologies improve things, creating economic growth. Incidentally, I'm not 100% sure whether general economic growth is what powers technological growth directly. I've recently seen arguments suggesting that progress of technology is tied to population growth - which has slowed in the past decades. If this is true, then we're in deep shit - at least until we learn how to convert money into technology instead of researchers into technology. But still, we would neither need economic growth to support population growth to cause technological growth (researchers -> progress), or economic growth to support technological growth directly (money -> progress). Maybe there's a different economic regime that would let technology to progress and life quality to improve without invoking an explicit concept of "economic growth", but I'm not sure what would that be and whether now is the time to figure it out.