>"Essentially, the idea that economic growth requires growth in resource use is false; rich countries have started to grow while using less and less of the plan

>"Essentially, the idea that economic growth requires growth in resource use is false; rich countries have started to grow while using less and less of the planet’s most important resources." Service economies rise off the backs of offshoring primary and secondary production to developing economies. None of that stuff exists without the underlying production, which absolutely depends on extraction of biosphere resources. Good luck growing your university-educated, service economy cities without the raw material and fossil fuel abundance it currently relies on. Being increasing abstracted from your foundations may feel secure but you'll topple just the same when they give way, even thousands of floors above. You could perhaps make an argument that more layers of leverage could be layered on top of existing levels of productive extraction, but when we're talking about a reduction (by choice or circumstance) in the underlying raw extractive activity, that's insufficient. >"The kind of massive intention reordering of global production and consumption that degrowthers fantasize about is not just pragmatically impossible to implement, it’s the kind of thing that essentially everyone in the world except for a few very shouty people in Northern Europe and the occasional Twitter activist is going to reject." Can't disagree with this. But the proposed alternative seems just as untenable: >"Making a rapid transition to green, sustainable growth will require huge new investments" Putting aside the energy density and portability issues, and the stuff about rare mineral extraction, base load etc etc etc... Perhaps if the current economic irrationality we've had hanging around since 2008 of an essentially unbounded slush fund of capital that somehow never significantly depreciates perpetuates forever onwards, this kind of thing could be pulled off. I'm unconvinced that we've entered some kind of calm water beyond our historical cycles of boom and bust, rather that we're in an extended period of irrationality yet to come down to earth. Still, nice to be hopeful. Just strikes me that both possible futures are equally unlikely, much as either one of them would be wonderful if they came to pass. Certainly better than the (IMO) more likely other way this all goes.