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I am extremely frustrated by these kinds of degrowth narratives, as they usually come out of a genuine concern for the environment - but all their approaches to

by iNic 4y ago

I am extremely frustrated by these kinds of degrowth narratives, as they usually come out of a genuine concern for the environment - but all their approaches to solutions are extremely economically illiterate. This [1] article explains some of my frustrations, but doesn't address everything mentioned on the Overshoot website. [1]: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-degrowth?s=r https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/people-are-realizing-that-...

tebs1200 4y ago
Which parts of the site do you interpret as describing "degrowth" narrative? I had a look at the solutions listed and the general theme seemed to be smarter use of existing resources and didn't really mention growth, or reducing growth. - Producing energy using less fossil fuels, not necessarily producing less energy - Producing food in a way that uses less fossil fuels, not producing less food. I think what the site is saying is we depend on ecological systems and natural resources to sustain our current standard of living, but we are consuming them at a faster rate than they can replenish. We need to use the available resources more efficiently - doesn't necessarily translate to less or even slower growth though.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Sustainable resource use leads to more growth, just not faster growth. You can overfish or overgraze to boost growth in the short term while sacrificing overall growth as ecosystem collapse will result in no or little growth. It would be more appropriate to look at 'lifetime' income of a resource but that would require 0% interest rates as positive interest rates devalue future income and reward short term thinking.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
> economically illiterate This is proposing that people are lacking faith. You believe something must work because an economic theory proposed that it does. In reality these theories often fail to predict anything substantial. Our economic system is very primitive and requires steady growth. But in reality the productivity of a finite area of land cannot grow any further even with technological advancement and long before you hit the limits of thermodynamics. The only thing that can grow in an unlimited fashion are excuses by economists to be honest. Sorry, perhaps I just don't have the growth mindset. Not proposing that the end is nigh, but bullshit has to be called what it is in the interest of progress.
- eru 4y ago
  You might want to read up on the bet between Ehrlich and Simon.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    You might want to read up on their second wager. If they had taken that first wager 10 years ago, what do you think the result would be? If you haven't, I would suggest "The Limits to Growth." I'm not arguing for "de-growth," but I think your fundamental assumption that we can innovate or Silicon Valley our way out of climate change without inadvertently sacrificing economic prosperity is too late and highly naive. https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/19...
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    That was a lifetime ago, and people still bring it up. All it demonstrates is that growth can go on for a bit. Can it actually go indefinitely? So far that we don't even need to care? Ehrlich might have been way too early but still have something interesting to say.
    - eru 4y ago
      Basically none of Ehrlich's predictions ever came true.
stinos 4y ago
but all their approaches to solutions are extremely economically illiterate. Not quite convinced about that. That, or the solutions you read aren't up to par with what science has to say about it. For starters not all presented solutions are even about degrowth? Just one example, take land use: the last talk I heard about that be a professor from a local university, people aren't exactly advocating 'less growth, less land use' but more like 'we expect synthetic meat to be x% of food intake so there's y% less land needed for animals and if all of that would be taken up by the produce needed for the synthetic meat that is actually i% more protein produced/acre' and 'x% of nice fertile land is going to degrade within the next decades because of erosion so if we implement some relatively simple measures that can be countered' and 'instead of dividing land into massive fields for production and some small dots of nature in between, as far as preservation goes it is often actually better to not do that but create one area for nature as large as those dots and optionally but even more optimal create lines of nature to connect those bigger patches'. Sounds economically viable to me, or at least certainly not 'extremely illiterate', and also not impossible.
lm28469 4y ago
Almost as if they were criticising the current economic framework, its ideology and consequences, it really makes you think doesn't it...
baq 4y ago
economics is a social science. it always must bow down to physics and it repeatedly has, to the dismay of economists...
- guerrilla 4y ago
  > economics is a social science. economics is a psuedoscience like all social sciences and astrology. They've predicted absolutely nothing of value. It's just people studying these things prior to them becoming scientific, like people did with alchemy and whatnot before chemistry.
  - BeFlatXIII 4y ago
    Wasn't the field of economics mostly a pseudoscientific cover for actions/creation of the Fed?
    - guerrilla 4y ago
      I don't know but I'd say this comment sums it up pretty well more generally https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409576
mac01021 4y ago
I'm glad you linked to that article, which I had not seen before. I think I agree with the author about degrowth as a goal being a political nonstarter. But I'm pretty skeptical about the notion that future growth can consist of ever increasing amounts of "dematerialized" goods and services without ceasing to be real, meaningful growth (however it might be defined). I also think the political and physical challenges inherent in technological or "pro-growth" (I need a better word) solutions for getting out of overshoot are widely underappreciated. This [1] article runs some numbers to show that, for our global civilization to satisfy its current level of energy consumption without emitting significant amounts of greenhouse gases in 2050, we will have to bring online clean energy generation capacity equivalent to one nuclear power station every day between now and then. Given that, I'd be extremely surprised to see us get there by 2150, or maybe at all. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2050-requires-a-new-nuclear-power-plant-every-day/?sh=66266c3035f7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero...
imtringued 4y ago
What is truly economically illiterate is to think that an economy needs to grow every year just to maintain the same standard of living. The economy is currently set up in a way that we will lose more than just future progress if growth stops, we will also lose past progress. It would be wise to get rid of this pointless rigidity. This fixation on growing every single year hurts prospects to grow more over longer periods of time. It also causes needless environmental destruction. We would rather deplete the soil for a quick buck than maintain it and make it better every year at the cost of lower initial yields.
fold3 4y ago
As a counterexample: In 2019,2020, the French government did an experiment with a random sample of citizen. It showed that if people are properly formed and educated about the climate crisis, they are willing to make a change and can even be more radical that what the climate expert wished for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Clim... Also economy is just numbers going up and down, it's not real. You just need to change some variables of what makes economic growth if you want your numbers keep going up in gdp. Earth overshoot is not as flexible, we don't make the rules.

by iNic 4y ago

tebs1200 4y ago

Which parts of the site do you interpret as describing "degrowth" narrative? I had a look at the solutions listed and the general theme seemed to be smarter use of existing resources and didn't really mention growth, or reducing growth. - Producing energy using less fossil fuels, not necessarily producing less energy - Producing food in a way that uses less fossil fuels, not producing less food. I think what the site is saying is we depend on ecological systems and natural resources to sustain our current standard of living, but we are consuming them at a faster rate than they can replenish. We need to use the available resources more efficiently - doesn't necessarily translate to less or even slower growth though.

imtringued 4y ago
Sustainable resource use leads to more growth, just not faster growth. You can overfish or overgraze to boost growth in the short term while sacrificing overall growth as ecosystem collapse will result in no or little growth. It would be more appropriate to look at 'lifetime' income of a resource but that would require 0% interest rates as positive interest rates devalue future income and reward short term thinking.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

> economically illiterate This is proposing that people are lacking faith. You believe something must work because an economic theory proposed that it does. In reality these theories often fail to predict anything substantial. Our economic system is very primitive and requires steady growth. But in reality the productivity of a finite area of land cannot grow any further even with technological advancement and long before you hit the limits of thermodynamics. The only thing that can grow in an unlimited fashion are excuses by economists to be honest. Sorry, perhaps I just don't have the growth mindset. Not proposing that the end is nigh, but bullshit has to be called what it is in the interest of progress.

eru 4y ago
You might want to read up on the bet between Ehrlich and Simon.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  You might want to read up on their second wager. If they had taken that first wager 10 years ago, what do you think the result would be? If you haven't, I would suggest "The Limits to Growth." I'm not arguing for "de-growth," but I think your fundamental assumption that we can innovate or Silicon Valley our way out of climate change without inadvertently sacrificing economic prosperity is too late and highly naive. https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/193149858X https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Growth-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/19...
- lordnacho 4y ago
  That was a lifetime ago, and people still bring it up. All it demonstrates is that growth can go on for a bit. Can it actually go indefinitely? So far that we don't even need to care? Ehrlich might have been way too early but still have something interesting to say.
  - eru 4y ago
    Basically none of Ehrlich's predictions ever came true.

stinos 4y ago

but all their approaches to solutions are extremely economically illiterate. Not quite convinced about that. That, or the solutions you read aren't up to par with what science has to say about it. For starters not all presented solutions are even about degrowth? Just one example, take land use: the last talk I heard about that be a professor from a local university, people aren't exactly advocating 'less growth, less land use' but more like 'we expect synthetic meat to be x% of food intake so there's y% less land needed for animals and if all of that would be taken up by the produce needed for the synthetic meat that is actually i% more protein produced/acre' and 'x% of nice fertile land is going to degrade within the next decades because of erosion so if we implement some relatively simple measures that can be countered' and 'instead of dividing land into massive fields for production and some small dots of nature in between, as far as preservation goes it is often actually better to not do that but create one area for nature as large as those dots and optionally but even more optimal create lines of nature to connect those bigger patches'. Sounds economically viable to me, or at least certainly not 'extremely illiterate', and also not impossible.

lm28469 4y ago

Almost as if they were criticising the current economic framework, its ideology and consequences, it really makes you think doesn't it...

baq 4y ago

economics is a social science. it always must bow down to physics and it repeatedly has, to the dismay of economists...

guerrilla 4y ago
> economics is a social science. economics is a psuedoscience like all social sciences and astrology. They've predicted absolutely nothing of value. It's just people studying these things prior to them becoming scientific, like people did with alchemy and whatnot before chemistry.
- BeFlatXIII 4y ago
  Wasn't the field of economics mostly a pseudoscientific cover for actions/creation of the Fed?
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    I don't know but I'd say this comment sums it up pretty well more generally https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31409576

mac01021 4y ago

I'm glad you linked to that article, which I had not seen before. I think I agree with the author about degrowth as a goal being a political nonstarter. But I'm pretty skeptical about the notion that future growth can consist of ever increasing amounts of "dematerialized" goods and services without ceasing to be real, meaningful growth (however it might be defined). I also think the political and physical challenges inherent in technological or "pro-growth" (I need a better word) solutions for getting out of overshoot are widely underappreciated. This [1] article runs some numbers to show that, for our global civilization to satisfy its current level of energy consumption without emitting significant amounts of greenhouse gases in 2050, we will have to bring online clean energy generation capacity equivalent to one nuclear power station every day between now and then. Given that, I'd be extremely surprised to see us get there by 2150, or maybe at all. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero-carbon-dioxide-emissions-by-2050-requires-a-new-nuclear-power-plant-every-day/?sh=66266c3035f7 https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2019/09/30/net-zero...

imtringued 4y ago

What is truly economically illiterate is to think that an economy needs to grow every year just to maintain the same standard of living. The economy is currently set up in a way that we will lose more than just future progress if growth stops, we will also lose past progress. It would be wise to get rid of this pointless rigidity. This fixation on growing every single year hurts prospects to grow more over longer periods of time. It also causes needless environmental destruction. We would rather deplete the soil for a quick buck than maintain it and make it better every year at the cost of lower initial yields.

fold3 4y ago

As a counterexample: In 2019,2020, the French government did an experiment with a random sample of citizen. It showed that if people are properly formed and educated about the climate crisis, they are willing to make a change and can even be more radical that what the climate expert wished for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Climate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Convention_for_Clim... Also economy is just numbers going up and down, it's not real. You just need to change some variables of what makes economic growth if you want your numbers keep going up in gdp. Earth overshoot is not as flexible, we don't make the rules.