3 ms·

Reading "The Limits to Growth" and having a passing understanding of the consequences of global warming will have you start to ask these kind of questions fairl

by Xixi 4y ago

Reading "The Limits to Growth" and having a passing understanding of the consequences of global warming will have you start to ask these kind of questions fairly quickly. The Shift Project [1] did exactly that for France: they elaborated a plan to completely transform the French economy with the explicit goal of not wrecking climate further, aptly called "Le Plan de transformation de l'économie française" (I assume the name is understandable to an English speaker). An interesting take of this plan is that instead of thinking in USD (or EUR, being in France), they reason strictly in terms of physical resources available, like land, water, oil, wind, sun, crops, wood, various ores, etc. Resources available within the next few decades, not in many centuries with future techs... [1] http://theshiftproject.org/en/home/ http://theshiftproject.org/en/home/

astrange 4y ago
Degrowth is completely false and is basically cope invented by the British to explain why it's actually good that their economy is so bad. Economic growth does not mean using more resources (because that's expensive), it means more productive use of the same resources. The US emits less carbon and uses less water than it did in the 60s with a much larger economy. (70s US degrowth environmentalism, like Limits to Growth, Cities as Growth Engines, The Population Bomb is the main cause of the US housing crisis due to NIMBYism, but also caused China to doom itself via the one-child policy, so the US wins yet again.)
- jakobnissen 4y ago
  Does that also factor into account that manufacturing has largely been moved to other countries? That is, does the average US consumer spend fewer resources than in 1960, taking imports into account? I'd guess resource usage has grown a LOT
  - astrange 4y ago
    Yes. Oh, and forests are growing back some places too, though I don't know about the US on that one. (That's why technological advances are good - it's harder to get clean energy than is it to burn wood for warmth, but it's worth it once you have it.)

by Xixi 4y ago

astrange 4y ago

Degrowth is completely false and is basically cope invented by the British to explain why it's actually good that their economy is so bad. Economic growth does not mean using more resources (because that's expensive), it means more productive use of the same resources. The US emits less carbon and uses less water than it did in the 60s with a much larger economy. (70s US degrowth environmentalism, like Limits to Growth, Cities as Growth Engines, The Population Bomb is the main cause of the US housing crisis due to NIMBYism, but also caused China to doom itself via the one-child policy, so the US wins yet again.)

jakobnissen 4y ago
Does that also factor into account that manufacturing has largely been moved to other countries? That is, does the average US consumer spend fewer resources than in 1960, taking imports into account? I'd guess resource usage has grown a LOT
- astrange 4y ago
  Yes. Oh, and forests are growing back some places too, though I don't know about the US on that one. (That's why technological advances are good - it's harder to get clean energy than is it to burn wood for warmth, but it's worth it once you have it.)