tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/limits-to-growth-8279/articlesLimits to Growth – The Conversation2023-10-18T02:31:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2150552023-10-18T02:31:20Z2023-10-18T02:31:20ZSlow solutions to fast-moving ecological crises won’t work – changing basic human behaviours must come first<p>As the world grapples with multiple ecological crises, it’s clear the various responses over the past half century have largely failed. Our <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00368504231201372">new research</a> argues the priority now should be addressing the real driver of these crises – our own maladaptive behaviours.</p>
<p>For at least five decades, scientists have worked to understand and document how human demands exceed Earth’s regenerative capacity, causing “<a href="https://www.overshootday.org/newsroom/media-backgrounder/">ecological overshoot</a>”. </p>
<p>Those warnings of the threats posed by the overshoot’s many symptoms, including climate change, were perhaps naive. They assumed people and governments would respond logically to existential threats by drastically changing behaviours.</p>
<p>The young researchers in the 1970s who published the <a href="https://donellameadows.org/archives/a-synopsis-limits-to-growth-the-30-year-update/">Limits to Growth</a> computer models showed graphically what would happen over the next century if business-as-usual economic growth continued. Their models predicted the <a href="https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/limits-and-beyond/">ecological and social disasters</a> we are witnessing now.</p>
<p>Once people saw the results of the research, the authors believed, they would understand the trajectory the world was on and reduce consumption accordingly. Instead, they <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269111802_The_Limits_to_Growth_Revisited">saw their work dismissed</a> and business-as-usual play out.</p>
<h2>The behavioural crisis</h2>
<p>During these past five decades, there have been innumerable reports, speeches and data, <a href="https://www.scientistswarningeurope.org.uk/film">ever more strident</a> in their predictions. Yet there has been no change in the economic growth trajectory. </p>
<p>The first <a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2017/11/World%20Scientists'%20Warning%20to%20Humanity%201992.pdf">world scientists’ warning to humanity</a> was published in 1992 as an open letter, signed by hundreds of scientists and detailing how human activities damage the environment. A <a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229">second notice</a> in 2017, which thousands of scientists signed, included this stark statement:</p>
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<p>If the world doesn’t act soon, there will be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery. </p>
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<p>Many of those working in the natural sciences felt they were doing what they could to prevent this “<a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full">ghastly future</a>” unfolding. Researchers even <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/00368504211056290">laid out a framework</a> of actions for the world to take, including human population planning and diminishing per-capita consumption of fossil fuels, meat and other resources. But few meaningful changes have been achieved.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/critics-of-degrowth-economics-say-its-unworkable-but-from-an-ecologists-perspective-its-inevitable-211496">Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable – but from an ecologist's perspective, it’s inevitable</a>
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<p>By taking a different perspective, our research explores intervention points and demonstrates the behavioural roots of ecological overshoot. It is a collaboration with behaviour-change strategists in the marketing industry, and grew partly from their disaffection with the outcomes of their work on human and planetary health.</p>
<p>Behind the research sits a stark statistic: the wealthiest 16% of humanity is responsible for <a href="https://impact.economist.com/sustainability/ecosystems-resources/data-point-ending-exploitation-of-earths-resources">74% of excess energy and material use</a>. This reflects a crisis of human behaviour. It is the outcome of many individual choices involving resource acquisition, wastefulness and accumulation of wealth and status. </p>
<p>Some of these choices may have served humans well in the evolutionary past. In a modern global economy, however, they become maladaptive behaviours that threaten all complex life on Earth.</p>
<h2>The ‘growth delusion’</h2>
<p>Current interventions to restrain climate change – just one symptom of ecological overshoot – are <a href="https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/14/4811/2022/">failing to curb</a> emissions. Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide <a href="https://www.iea.org/reports/co2-emissions-in-2022">reached a new high</a>, partly as a result of air travel rebounding after the COVID pandemic. </p>
<p>We argue that trying to fix an accelerating problem with slow solutions is itself the problem. Instead, we need to treat the root causes of ecological overshoot and its behavioural drivers, rather than be distracted by patching up its many symptoms. </p>
<p>A prime example is the current “solution” to climate change through a full <a href="https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/AK2310/S00052/a-normal-election-campaign-in-abnormal-times-is-dangerous.htm">transition to renewable energy systems</a>. This simply replaces one form of energy with another, but doesn’t address the rising demand for energy that <a href="http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue87/Rees87.pdf">enabled overshoot</a> in the first place.</p>
<p>Such interventions are incremental, resource intensive, slow moving and flawed: they aim to maintain rather than manage current levels of consumption. This “<a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/3/516">growth delusion</a>” offers a false hope that technology will allow human society to avoid the need for change.</p>
<h2>An emergency response</h2>
<p>To overcome the critical disconnect between science, the economy and public understanding of these issues, an interdisciplinary response will be needed.</p>
<p>Paradoxically, the marketing, media and entertainment industries – central to the manipulation of human behaviours towards resource acquisition and waste – may offer the best way to reorient that behaviour and help avoid ecological collapse.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/even-temporary-global-warming-above-2-will-affect-life-in-the-oceans-for-centuries-214251">Even temporary global warming above 2℃ will affect life in the oceans for centuries</a>
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<p>Logically, the same behavioural strategies that fuelled consumerism can do the reverse and create the necessary desire for a stable state.</p>
<p>Understanding the many dimensions of the behavioural crisis, including the influence of power structures and vested interests in a market economy, is crucial. Defusing and even co-opting those forces to reform the economy and reverse the damage is the challenge.</p>
<p>It will require a concerted multi-disciplinary effort to identify the best ways to produce a rapid global adoption of new norms for consumption, reproduction and waste. The survival of complex life on Earth is the goal.</p>
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<p><em>This research was led by Joseph Merz of the New Zealand-based Merz Institute and its <a href="https://merzinstitute.org/overshoot-behaviour-lab/">Overshoot Behaviour Lab</a>. Other authors include energy researcher Chris Rhodes; economist and ecologist Bill Rees; and behavioural science practitioner and vice chair of advertising company Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Joy is affiliated with The Merz Institute and the Morgan Foundation</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phoebe Barnard is affiliated with the University of Cape Town, University of Washington, Stable Planet Alliance, Global Restoration Collaborative and Global Evergreening Alliance, and occasionally works on contract for the United Nations and national governments.</span></em></p>Ecological overshoot is driven by human consumption and a belief in endless economic growth. Could the marketing and media industries that feed those habits also help change them?Mike Joy, Senior Researcher; Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of WellingtonPhoebe Barnard, Affiliate Full Professor, University of Washington; Research Associate, African Climate & Development Initiative and FitzPatrick Institute, University of Cape Town; Founding CEO, Stable Planet Alliance, University of WashingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1894212022-09-14T17:06:46Z2022-09-14T17:06:46ZWhy it’s not anti-environmental to be in favour of economic growth<p>In the midst of today’s cost of living crisis, many people <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22408556/save-planet-shrink-economy-degrowth">who are critical</a> of the idea of economic growth see an <a href="https://www.resilience.org/stories/2022-08-26/degrowth-gains-ground/">opportunity</a>. In their recent book <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3989-the-future-is-degrowth">The Future is Degrowth</a>, for example, prominent advocates Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter argue that the post-Covid inflation has predominantly been caused by the inherent instability in the capitalist system. </p>
<p>This came in the form of problems with global supply chains and the asset price inflation which stemmed from government action in response to the pandemic. Since the same system is, in their view, <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2022/08/10/is-it-time-for-ireland-to-consider-degrowth/">also responsible</a> for causing climate change, moving away from it and curbing the economic growth on which it turns will help kill two birds with one stone. </p>
<p>Arguments like these recall and are <a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29999">directly influenced by</a> a famous scientific report from <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-controversial-1972-limits-to-growth-report-got-right-our-choices-today-shape-future-conditions-for-life-on-earth-184920">50 years ago</a> called <a href="https://collections.dartmouth.edu/content/deliver/inline/meadows/pdf/meadows_ltg-001.pdf">Limits to Growth</a>. Written by a group of researchers commissioned by the Club of Rome think tank, it warned of an “overshoot and collapse” of the global economy within 100 years. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.economicsobservatory.com/how-have-economists-thought-about-the-environment">The researchers forecast</a> that this decline would be caused by exponential growth in populations, industrialisation, pollution, food production and resource depletion. The answer, they said, was to move to a state of economic and ecological stability that would be sustainable far into the future. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Newsweek cover from 1972" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=842&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481160/original/file-20220825-14-2unwin.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1058&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Newsweek</span></span>
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<p>When the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis">oil crisis</a> of October 1973 to March 1974 saw oil prices quadrupling, it was seen as vindicating the report’s prediction of a dramatic surge in the price of oil. A famous <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/5665427476">Newsweek</a> edition from late 1973 ran with the headline “Running out of everything”, next to a picture of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300198973/bet/">Uncle Sam</a> looking into an empty cornucopia. </p>
<p>Yet contrary to the predictions in the Limits report, the oil shock was not caused by resource scarcity but by geopolitics. The Saudis and oil-supplier cartel Opec had imposed an oil embargo on the west to protest the US arming Israel in its wars against Syria and Egypt.</p>
<p>A similar misapprehension lies at the heart of the arguments by <a href="https://www.commonsnetwork.org/2022/06/01/we-need-growth-because-otherwise-our-economies-will-collapse-and-other-myths/">today’s degrowthers</a> over the cost of living crisis. The oil and gas shortages causing soaring prices are mainly due to the Ukraine war and a fall in supplies due to the majors investing less in production because of the net zero agenda. </p>
<h2>Wrongheaded economics</h2>
<p>Not only did the writers of the Limits report predict a spike in oil prices for the wrong reasons, they also failed to consider how the market would respond. Higher prices reduced demand and incentivised energy efficient investment and oil exploration, with major new reserves being identified.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman/files/ptltgfmd.pdf">Growth has</a> not (yet) been constrained by a lack of resources, partly because technological advances enable us to generate more from less, and partly because of market forces. When a product or commodity becomes more expensive, people either use less of it or switch to an alternative. </p>
<p>So the reality is that inflation may well subside over time, depending of course on what central banks do with monetary policy. Equally, pursuing degrowth could be inflationary or deflationary. It depends on whether the supply of goods and services falls further than the demand. </p>
<p>Both in the 1970s and today, one of the main issues is a fundamental misunderstanding of what economic growth is and what drives it. It is seen as being quantity driven, in the sense that degrowthers think there is an insatiable demand for more of the same, which will <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/441772/less-is-more-by-jason-hickel/9781786091215">eventually have</a> “devastating consequences for the living world”. </p>
<p>But economic growth is more about quality than quantity. It’s not just about producing more cars, for example, but about making them more fuel efficient or electric. This in turn creates demand for different resources, such as lithium for batteries.</p>
<p>Or to give another example of how economists view growth, one important study looked at how the price of a <a href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6064/c6064.pdf#page=13">unit of light fell over time</a>. This was because as technology shifted from candles to modern light bulbs, the cost of production in terms of hours worked fell dramatically. </p>
<p>Yet in another respect, the degrowthers are entirely right. Again, it’s worth looking back at the Limits report to understand this. To test their base case, the researchers looked at various alternative scenarios for how the future might pan out. </p>
<p>In one, they assumed that the world’s stock of available non-renewable resources doubled. This meant that scarcity was less of a problem than in their base case. But they predicted that, rather than averting catastrophe, this would instead cause damaging increases in pollution associated with economic activity. </p>
<p>Pollution has indeed become a bigger issue than resource constraints. For example, <a href="https://archive.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/sres/emission/index.php?idp=27">Limits predicted</a> that CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere <a href="https://twitter.com/RARohde/status/1551898576812478467">would reach 435 parts per million (ppm)</a> by 2022 if trends in fossil fuel consumption continued unabated. <a href="https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/">It is currently 421ppm</a>, so they were fairly close. It is this linkage between environmental harm and the economy that is the report’s most important legacy. </p>
<h2>Managing the wealth of nations</h2>
<p>After the Limits thesis, economists <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/i339981">began incorporating</a> the idea of finite resources more explicitly into models of economic growth. This formed the basis of the economic approach to sustainable development, which says that you achieve intergenerational equity by reinvesting the proceeds from finite resources into other assets like buildings, machines or tools. </p>
<p>For example, if US$1 of oil is extracted from the ground, US$1 should be reinvested elsewhere. Though still far from universally adopted, some oil-producing nations such as <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214790X22000910">Norway</a> do this.</p>
<p>A related idea is that we <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-environ-012420-043621">should move away</a> from thinking about growth of national income and instead focus on managing national wealth. Wealth in this context <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2305">refers to</a> all assets from which people obtain wellbeing, and changes in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joes.12120">wealth per capita</a> – referred to in the field as “genuine saving” – are indicators of whether development is sustainable. </p>
<p>The key is to put the right price on different types of assets, including taking into account <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05224-9">damage from pollution</a>. For example carbon is clearly very important when valuing changes in wealth. The following <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/the-missing-economic-measure-wealth">chart</a> uses our calculations to show an alternative to using GDP to measure progress over the 20th century. </p>
<p><strong>How per capita ‘wealth’ changed over the 20th century</strong></p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Graph showing growth in wealth per capita and GDP in the world over the 20th century" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=231&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/483984/original/file-20220912-26-6o7epa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=290&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Authors' data/Our World in Data</span></span>
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<p>Rather than encouraging degrowth, it is now accepted by <a href="https://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/emeritus/pd10000">most environmental economists</a> that this measure of human wealth is a useful complement to GDP. This is being taken increasingly seriously by governments. For example, the US recently announced it would <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2022/08/18/a-new-national-strategy-to-reflect-natural-assets-on-americas-balance-sheet/">start accounting</a> for its natural assets. </p>
<p>But if we are to win the argument about changing the basis on which we measure human progress, it is vital that we are clear about the reasons for doing so. Believing that economic growth is inherently bad is not helpful.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189421/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Eoin McLaughlin receives funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Project P19-0048:1, "Genuine Savings as a measure of sustainable development. Towards a GDP replacement."</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cristián Ducoing receives funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Project P19-0048:1, "Genuine Savings as a measure of sustainable development. Towards a GDP replacement." </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Les Oxley receives funding from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Project P19-0048:1, "Genuine Savings as a measure of sustainable development. Towards a GDP replacement".
</span></em></p>Degrowthers are using the cost of living crisis to try and further their cause.Eoin McLaughlin, Professor in Economics, University College CorkCristián Ducoing, Senior lecturer at Sustainability transformations over time and space, Lund UniversityLes Oxley, Professor in Economics, University of WaikatoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1239162019-11-04T19:03:27Z2019-11-04T19:03:27ZNo Australian city has a long-term vision for living sustainably. We can’t go on like this<p><em>This article is part of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/anzsee-78179">series</a> on rebalancing the human–nature interactions that are central to the study and practice of ecological economics, which is the focus of the <a href="https://anzsee.org.au/2019-anzsee-conference/">2019 ANZSEE Conference</a> in Melbourne later this month.</em></p>
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<p>Australia was already <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/44609144?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">one of the most urbanised nations</a> by the end of the 19th century. Unlike European and North American countries, Australia’s pattern of settlement did not have a neat urban hierarchy. The gap between the large and small towns was huge.</p>
<p>These patterns have intensified in the decades since federation, especially after the second world war. International and internal <a href="https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/3218.0">migration trends have driven rapid growth</a> in the big cities, especially Melbourne and Sydney. This has created major problems with providing adequate <a href="https://theconversation.com/housing-policy-reset-is-overdue-and-not-only-in-australia-112835">housing</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/congestion-busting-infrastructure-plays-catch-up-on-long-neglected-needs-114598">infrastructure</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/some-suburbs-are-being-short-changed-on-services-and-liveability-which-ones-and-whats-the-solution-83966">services</a>. </p>
<p>The fundamental issue is the reluctance of urban communities and their leaders to discuss what might be sustainable populations. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/if-we-want-liveable-cities-in-2060-well-have-to-work-together-to-transform-urban-systems-119235">If we want liveable cities in 2060 we'll have to work together to transform urban systems</a>
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<h2>The folly of unlimited growth</h2>
<p>No Australian city has a long-term vision showing how a future stabilised population might be supported with the essential resources of food, water and energy. No Australian city has faced up to the inevitable social tensions of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-did-the-rich-man-say-to-the-poor-man-why-spatial-inequality-in-australia-is-no-joke-73841">increasing inequality</a> between a well-served inner-urban elite and an increasingly under-resourced urban fringe. </p>
<p>Leaders in cities that have not grown as rapidly, such as Adelaide, <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/as-the-east-coast-struggles-with-population-numbers-south-australia-is-desperate-for-a-boost/news-story/5ebca065ebe3f975ed83827d2373db37">lament their failure to grow like Sydney and Melbourne</a>, despite all the associated problems. All implicitly believe unlimited growth is possible. </p>
<p>In reality, the expanding ecological footprints of the large cities have created unsustainable demands on land to support urban dwellers. And the wastes the cities produce are straining the capacity of the environment to handle these.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-ecological-economics-and-why-do-we-need-to-talk-about-it-123915">What is ‘ecological economics’ and why do we need to talk about it?</a>
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<p>Given the many unpriced flow-on effects from dense urban growth and market-led development, governments are struggling to deal with the undesirable consequences. <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-city-workers-average-commute-has-blown-out-to-66-minutes-a-day-how-does-yours-compare-120598">Congestion</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/walking-mightnt-be-good-for-you-if-its-through-australias-polluted-city-streets-88772">pollution</a> threaten to overwhelm the many social and economic benefits of urban life. </p>
<p>The growth and concentration of populations are also driving chronic excess demand for appropriate housing. The result is <a href="https://theconversation.com/affordable-housing-lessons-from-sydney-hong-kong-and-singapore-3-keys-to-getting-the-policy-mix-right-123443">serious affordability problems</a>, which are adding to inequality across society and generations. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/50-years-after-the-lucky-country-australias-sustainability-challenge-remains-56506">50 years after The Lucky Country, Australia's sustainability challenge remains</a>
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<p>In 1970, urban historian <a href="https://theaimn.com/book-review-ideas-for-australian-cities-by-hugh-stretton/">Hugh Stretton pointed</a> to the role of Australia’s widespread owner occupation in offsetting the inequalities generated in labour markets and by inherited wealth. This is no longer the case. </p>
<p>The dominant neoliberal economic ideology has resulted in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-needs-to-reboot-affordable-housing-funding-not-scrap-it-72861">retreat from providing public housing</a>. Abandoning would-be home-owners to the market has produced a situation in which urban land and house ownership is <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-housing-boom-is-remaking-australias-social-class-structure-66976">reinforcing class-based inequalities</a>. Home ownership is increasingly the preserve of the affluent and their children. </p>
<p>Housing-related inequality is also seen in the geography of our cities. <a href="https://theconversation.com/city-by-city-analysis-shows-our-capitals-arent-liveable-for-many-residents-85676">Poorer households are priced out of locations with better access</a> to good jobs, schools, transport, health care and other services.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-big-cities-are-engines-of-inequality-so-how-do-we-fix-that-69775">Our big cities are engines of inequality, so how do we fix that?</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Failures of governance</h2>
<p>Governments in Australia’s federation are poorly placed to respond adequately. <a href="https://theconversation.com/metropolitan-governance-is-the-missing-link-in-australias-reform-agenda-55872">Responsibilities and fiscal resources are divided</a>, creating obstacles to effective planning and infrastructure provision.</p>
<p>The main factor driving urban population growth is an unprecedented <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/MigrationStatistics">rate of inward migration</a>. The national government <a href="https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/what-we-do/migration-program-planning-levels">sets large migration targets</a> as an easy way of creating economic growth. This leaves state governments with the impossible task of meeting the resulting demand for infrastructure. </p>
<p>Jane O’Sullivan <a href="https://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/135517/subdr156-infrastructure.pdf">has shown</a> each extra urban citizen requires about A$250,000 of investment. The total sum is well beyond the capacity of state and local governments.</p>
<p>Arguments between federal and state governments are heavily politicised, especially when it comes to major transport investments. Even within single jurisdictions, complex demands and unexpected consequences prevent effective action. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-recycling-crisis-may-be-here-to-stay-112055">waste recycling crisis</a> is a prime example.</p>
<p>State governments must also deal with difficult trade-offs between, for example, allowing further <a href="https://theconversation.com/living-liveable-this-is-what-residents-have-to-say-about-life-on-the-urban-fringe-111339">development on the edges of cities</a> or <a href="https://theconversation.com/becoming-more-urban-attitudes-to-medium-density-living-are-changing-in-sydney-and-melbourne-84693">encouraging higher density in built-up areas</a>. This often involves <a href="https://theconversation.com/vested-interests-behind-city-shapers-often-subvert-higher-density-policies-74244">conflicts</a> with local governments and communities, concerned to protect their ways of life.</p>
<p>Australian planners and governments have long tinkered with <a href="https://theconversation.com/making-small-cities-bigger-will-help-better-distribute-australias-25-million-people-101180">policies to encourage decentralisation to smaller cities</a>. Despite these attempts, the dominant pattern of urbanisation with its seemingly intractable problems has hardened, a triumph of reality over rhetoric.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/our-cities-fall-short-on-sustainability-but-planning-innovations-offer-local-solutions-107091">Our cities fall short on sustainability, but planning innovations offer local solutions</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>What needs to change?</h2>
<p>To get beyond the rhetoric and make our cities more sustainably liveable requires a much more deliberate and interventionist role for government. It also requires residents of our cities and suburbs to be willing to allow their governments to interrupt business as usual. </p>
<p>This, we know from experience, is a big ask. It will step on the toes of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/housing-policy-is-captive-to-property-politics-so-dont-expect-politicians-to-tackle-affordability-55384">property lobby</a> and ordinary home owners. In some cases, for example, the short-term financial interests of property owners are leading local authorities to ignore scientific warnings about the impacts of climate change on coastal development.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/water-may-soon-lap-at-the-door-but-still-some-homeowners-dont-want-to-rock-the-boat-124289">Water may soon lap at the door, but still some homeowners don't want to rock the boat</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Major changes are also needed in how urban land is taxed and the proceeds invested. “Simple” reforms like <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-way-australia-taxes-housing-is-manifestly-unfair-58421">replacing stamp duty on land transfer with a universal land tax</a>, as the <a href="http://www.taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/Content.aspx?doc=html/home.htm">Henry Tax Review</a> recommended, will take political courage that has been absent to date. </p>
<p>More complex policies like finding ways of diverting population growth to non-metropolitan regions will take careful thought and experimentation. This might include relocating government agencies to provincial cities. This has been tried sporadically in the past at the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-04-19/decentralisation-push-for-federal-government-departments/8453816">federal</a> level and in states such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/may/04/victorian-public-service-jobs-to-move-to-ballarat-and-latrobe-valley">Victoria</a> and <a href="https://psa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/NSW-Decentralisation-Taskforce-Report-April-2013-FINAL.pdf">New South Wales</a>. However, such cases tend to be one-offs and do not reflect an overall strategic plan.</p>
<p>Future generations will inevitably be critical of the complete failure of current leaders to plan for sustainable development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123916/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mike Berry has received funding from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, an independent organisation funded by universities and the nine federal, state and territory governments, and the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Lowe was president of the Australian Conservation Foundation from 2004 to 2014. He is now chair of the Wakefield Futures Group.</span></em></p>The demands on land and resources from our fast-growing cities are unsustainable, as are the wastes they produce. Yet still our leaders act as if unlimited growth is possible.Mike Berry, Emeritus Professor, RMIT UniversityIan Lowe, Emeritus Professor, School of Science, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/577212016-04-20T20:13:11Z2016-04-20T20:13:11ZLimits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from disaster<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119406/original/image-20160420-25592-rinu4n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The earth is a finite place. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Earth image from www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Prosperity-without-Growth-Economics-Finite/dp/1849713235">15 times larger</a> than it is now, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). If the global economy then grows by 3% to the end of the century, it will be 60 times larger than now.</p>
<p>The existing economy is already <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1259855">environmentally unsustainable</a>. It is utterly implausible to think we can “decouple” economic growth from environmental impact so significantly, especially since recent decades of extraordinary technological advancement have only increased our impacts on the planet, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271.abstract">not reduced them</a>. </p>
<p>Moreover, if you asked politicians whether they’d rather have 4% growth than 3%, they’d all say yes. This makes the growth trajectory outlined above all the more absurd.</p>
<p>Others have shown why limitless growth is a recipe for <a href="http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf">disaster</a>. I’ve argued that living in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224">degrowth economy</a> would actually increase well-being, both socially and environmentally. But what would it take to get there? </p>
<p>In a <a href="http://d2hqr0jocqnenz.cloudfront.net/cdn/farfuture/RFOgKDaIzpgM9yjt1sW6ZSXfvlC5ZrJve7xLCgiDqh4/mtime:1461028632/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-IssuesPaper-6_Alexander_2016.pdf">new paper</a> published by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, I look at government policies that could facilitate a planned transition beyond growth – and I reflect on the huge obstacles lying in the way. </p>
<h2>Measuring progress</h2>
<p>First, we need to know what we’re aiming for. </p>
<p>It is now widely recognised that GDP – the monetary value of all goods and services produced in an economy – is a <a href="http://thenewpress.com/books/mismeasuring-our-lives">deeply flawed</a> measure of progress. </p>
<p>GDP can be growing while our environment is being degraded, inequality is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century">worsening</a>, and social well-being is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Spirit-Level-Equality-Societies/dp/1608193411">stagnant or falling</a>. Better indicators of progress include the <a href="http://rprogress.org/sustainability_indicators/genuine_progress_indicator.htm">Genuine Progress Indicator</a> (GPI), which accounts for a wide range of social, economic and environmental factors. </p>
<h2>Cap resources and energy</h2>
<p>Environmental impact is driven by demand for resources and energy. It is now clear that the planet cannot possibly support current or bigger populations if developing nations used the same amount of resources and energy as developed nations. </p>
<p>Demand can be reduced through efficiency gains (doing more with less), but these gains tend to be reinvested in <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6271.abstract">more growth and consumption</a>, rather than reducing impacts. </p>
<p>A post-growth economy would therefore need diminishing “resource caps” to achieve sustainability. These would aim to limit a nation’s consumption to a “fair share” of available resources. This in turn would stimulate efficiency, technological innovation and recycling, thereby minimising waste.</p>
<p>This means that a post-growth economy will need to produce and consume in far less resource-intensive ways, which will almost certainly mean reduced GDP. There will of course be scope to progress in <a href="http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/TheCaseforSimplicitySimplicityInstitute.pdf">other ways</a>, such as increased leisure time and community engagement. </p>
<h2>Work less, live more</h2>
<p>Growth in GDP is often defended on the grounds that it is required to keep unemployment at <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/business-spectator/faster-growth-needed-for-jobs-rba/news-story/aaeda6b567f77ad705893fad83576e75">manageable levels</a>. So jobs will have to maintained in other ways.</p>
<p>Even though GDP has been growing quite consistently in recent decades, many Westerners, including <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-19/researcher-warns-of-health-impacts-of-long-work-hours/5901092">Australians</a>, still seem to be locked into a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Work-Leisure-Environment-Overwork-Consumption/dp/1847201032">culture of overwork</a>. </p>
<p>By <a href="http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/entry/time-on-our-side">reducing the average working week</a> to 28 hours, a post-growth economy would share the available work among the working population. This would minimise or eliminate unemployment even in a non-growing or contracting economy. </p>
<p>Lower income would mean we would have less stuff, reducing environmental impact, but we would receive more freedom in exchange. <a href="https://www.createspace.com/5461040">Planned degrowth</a> is therefore very different to unplanned recession.</p>
<h2>Redirect public spending</h2>
<p>Governments are the most significant player in any economy and have the most spending power. Taking limits to growth seriously will require a fundamental rethink of how public funds are invested and spent.</p>
<p>Among other things, this would include a swift <a href="https://theconversation.com/unburnable-carbon-why-we-need-to-leave-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground-40467">divestment</a> from the fossil fuel economy and reinvestment in renewable energy systems. But just as important is investing in efficiency and reducing energy demand through behaviour change. Obviously, it will be much easier to transition to 100% renewable energy if energy demand is a fraction of what it is today. </p>
<p>We could fund this transition by redirecting funds from military spending (climate change is, after all, a <a href="https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/climatesecurity">security threat</a>), cutting <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/18/fossil-fuel-companies-getting-10m-a-minute-in-subsidies-says-imf">fossil fuel subsidies</a> and putting an adequate price on carbon. </p>
<h2>Reform banking and finance</h2>
<p>Banking and finance systems essentially have a “<a href="http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue57/Trainer57.pdf">growth imperative</a>” built into their structures. Money is loaned into existence by private banks as interest-bearing debt. Paying back the debt plus the interest requires an expansion of the monetary supply. </p>
<p>There is so much <a href="http://www.economist.com/content/global_debt_clock">public</a> and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/new-record-the-rise-and-rise-of-australian-household-debt-2015-2">private</a> debt today that the only way it could be paid back is via decades of continued growth. </p>
<p>So we need <a href="http://positivemoney.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Our-Money-A4.pdf">deep reform</a> of banking and finance systems. We’d also need to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-debt-jubilee-an-old-testament-solution-to-a-modern-financial-crisis-11816">cancel debt</a> in some circumstances, especially in developing nations that are being <a href="http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/12/12/2013/donors%E2%80%99-dilemma-aid-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries">suffocated by interest payments</a> to rich world lenders. </p>
<h2>The population question</h2>
<p>Then there’s population. Many people assume that population growth will slow when the <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fast-growth-can-solve-climate-change/">developing world gets rich</a>, but to globalise affluence would be environmentally catastrophic. It is absolutely imperative therefore that nations around the world unite to confront the population challenge directly. </p>
<p>Population policies will inevitably be controversial but the world needs bold and equitable leadership on this issue, because current trends suggest we are heading for <a href="http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/09/17/science.1257469.abstract">11 billion</a> by the end of this century. </p>
<p>Anyone who casually dismisses the idea that there is a limit to how many people Earth can support should be given a <a href="http://simplicitycollective.com/earth-as-a-petri-dish-the-problem-of-growth">Petri dish</a> with a swab of bacteria. Watch as the colony grows until it consumes all of the available nutrients or is poisoned by its own waste.</p>
<p>The first thing needed is a global fund that focuses on providing the education, empowerment and contraception required to minimise the estimated <a href="http://www.who.int/whr/2005/chapter3/en/index3.html">87 million</a> unintended pregnancies worldwide every year. </p>
<h2>Eliminating poverty</h2>
<p>The conventional path to poverty alleviation is the strategy of GDP growth, on the assumption that “a rising tide will lift all boats”. But, as I’ve argued, a rising tide will sink all boats. </p>
<p>Poverty alleviation must be achieved more directly, via redistribution of wealth and power, both nationally and internationally. In other words (and to change the metaphor), a post-growth economy would eliminate poverty not by baking an ever-larger pie (which <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/nov/01/global-poverty-is-worse-than-you-think-could-you-live-on-190-a-day">isn’t working</a>) but by sharing it differently. </p>
<p>The richest 62 people on the planet own more than the poorest <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined">half of humanity</a>. Dwell on that for a moment, and then dare to tell me that redistribution is not an imperative of justice.</p>
<h2>So what’s stopping us?</h2>
<p>Despite these post-growth policy proposals seeming coherent, they face at least four huge obstacles – which may be insurmountable. </p>
<p>First, the paradigm of growth is deeply embedded in national governments, especially in the developed world. At the cultural level, the expectation of ever-increasing affluence is as strong as ever. I am not so deluded as to think otherwise.</p>
<p>Second, these policies would directly undermine the economic interests of the most powerful corporations and institutions in society, so fierce resistance should be expected.</p>
<p>Third, and perhaps most challenging, is that in a globalised world these policies would likely trigger either capital flight or economic collapse, or both. For example, how would the stock markets react to this policy agenda?</p>
<p>Finally, there is also a geopolitical risk in being first to adopt these policies. Reduced military spending, for instance, would reduce a nation’s relative power. </p>
<p>So if these “top-down” policies are unlikely to work, it would seem to follow that if a post-growth economy is to emerge, it may have to be driven into existence <a href="http://simplicityinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/TransitionMovement.pdf">from below</a>, with communities coming together to build the new economy at the grassroots level. </p>
<p>And if we face a future where the growth economy grows itself to death, which seems to be the most <a href="http://sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/sites/default/files/docs/MSSI-ResearchPaper-4_Turner_2014.pdf">likely scenario</a>, then building up local resilience and self-sufficiency now will prove to be time and energy well spent. </p>
<p>In the end, it is likely that only when a deep crisis arrives will an ethics of <a href="https://www.createspace.com/5625313">sufficiency</a> come to inform our economic thinking and practice more broadly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57721/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samuel Alexander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The global economy is already unsustainable – let alone if it gets bigger.Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/335512014-10-29T19:08:54Z2014-10-29T19:08:54ZWhy uncontrolled climate change may be an ultimate limit to growth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63151/original/ym5vrcs9-1414560714.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Earth is finite - so are there limits to growth?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall/14648179676/in/set-72157621443555137">NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?”</p>
<p>At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting. My whiteboard showed two graphs with contradictory messages about the long-run, environmental sustainability of global industrial development, the big question that’s nagged me ever since teenage exposure to <a href="https://woods.stanford.edu/about/woods-faculty/paul-ehrlich">Paul Ehrlich’s Population-Bomb eco-doomsterism</a>.</p>
<p>After much wrestling with the contradictions, <a href="https://researchers.anu.edu.au/researchers/pezzey-j-cv">I</a> and my colleague <a href="https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/academic/paul-burke?tb=publication">Paul Burke</a> have come up with a qualified answer: sustainability <em>is</em> possible over the next century, but only if we control climate change. The results were published this month in <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914002109">Ecological Economics</a>.</p>
<h2>Swimming or sinking?</h2>
<p>My first graph showed the World Bank’s Adjusted Net Saving (ANS) indicator, which has declined, but stayed reassuringly, optimistically positive over the last 30 years. It calculates the percentage of global GDP saved, after adjustments including depreciations of capital equipment and environmental resources. Using approximate economic theory that I’d helped to establish, it is economists’ preferred indicator of sustainability.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=436&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63067/original/sryr4s5t-1414536142.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=548&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The World Bank’s global Adjusted Net Saving measure, while declining, has stayed positive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.ADJ.SVNX.GN.ZS%20measure">Data source: World Bank</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The other graph was “Ecological Reserve”: the fractional surplus of global biocapacity above WWF’s well-known <a href="http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_for_nations/">Ecological Footprint</a>. It starts negative in 1975, and heads relentlessly downwards to ever-worsening “ecological overshoot”, threatening sustainability — or so pessimists say.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63068/original/gm9ymfvs-1414536176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Global Ecological Reserve has tracked relentlessly downwards.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/footprint_for_nations/">Data Source: Footprint Network</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Helped by Paul, another year-2007 student, I started a paper about these opposing sustainability indicators, to address his classmates’ question.</p>
<h2>Putting it together</h2>
<p>The first step was easy and surprisingly new. Just show the graphs together, including the very different weights they give to current, global CO<sub>2</sub> emissions, which cause future global warming damage: a tiny downward CO<sub>2</sub> shift in Adjusted Net Saving, but an ever-deepening plunge in Ecological Reserve from comfortably positive to worryingly negative.</p>
<p>But then I went further, by choosing to build a single, hybrid indicator of global sustainability that would, I hoped, carefully temper optimism with pessimism, and thus answer the question directly.</p>
<p>Our hybrid indicator both extended Adjusted Net Saving, to include fairly conventional valuations of the benefit of technological progress and the cost of population growth, and changed it, to better reflect climate scientists’ deep concerns about likely <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf">future warming damage</a> (see also <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/25/0812355106">here</a>).</p>
<p>We considered including other global threats like biodiversity loss and rising income inequality, which many people view as unsustainable; but even measuring, let alone modelling, these variables at a global level proved too contentious.</p>
<h2>Dicing with climate change</h2>
<p>For our climate concern, we wanted different valuations for the future warming damage from a tonne of CO<sub>2</sub> emitted now under controlled or uncontrolled future emissions, with both valuations far above the World Bank’s seemingly tiny $7 per tonne of CO<sub>2</sub>.</p>
<p>After much debate, we modified the well-known <a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/Question-Balance-William-Nordhaus/9780300137484">DICE model</a> of global climate-economy interactions. We changed key assumptions in it, particularly about warming damage, so that the stringent emission control needed to meet the agreed UN target of <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/%20cop15/eng/%2011a01.pdf">2C maximum global warming</a> would be regarded as economically justified — which it is not, according to DICE’s standard results.</p>
<p>We did so after studying a vocal minority of <a href="http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0921800910001096/1-s2.0-S0921800910001096-main.pdf?_tid=c98ef2c4-5efb-11e4-ba39-00000aab0f27&acdnat=1414539803_1df7d63df7c23218289d5ee3e5938b45">climate analysts </a> (see also <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-008-9529-3#page-1">here</a>), which persuaded us that the uniqueness and long time-scale of human-induced climate change means warming damage is, and will remain, <em>highly unknowable</em>. Therefore, working backwards from the 2C target is as valid as the guesswork behind all direct economic estimates of future climate damage.</p>
<h2>Climate can be a limit to growth</h2>
<p>Our final results were fairly common sense, but unusual in giving qualified support to both optimism and pessimism.</p>
<p>If future CO<sub>2</sub> emissions are controlled to limit warming to 2C, as is “optimal” in our modified climate-economy model, then our Adjusted Net Saving in 2005 is much higher than the World Bank’s number, thanks to our including the value of technological progress. Sustainable future growth in average well-being thereby looks much likelier.</p>
<p>But if emissions are uncontrolled, the future looks bleak. Adjusted Net Saving is firmly negative in 2005, and average well-being in our modified model falls after 2065. This contrasts with DICE’s standard result that not controlling CO<sub>2</sub> barely touches growth in well-being.</p>
<p>Finding any such limit to growth in a conventional climate-economy model, albeit with much-modified parameters like ours, is actually quite rare.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=437&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63069/original/s6dp8nm4-1414536263.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=549&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our modified climate-economy model (green and blue) shows that well-being continues to grow only if we control carbon emissions. In the unmodified model (black), the no-control path stays within 1% of the controlled one, so it is not shown separately; but our paper views its cost of global warming as far too low.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Believe it… or not</h2>
<p>Our more general conclusions are thus uncomfortable ones: on the limits to growth, to economics, and to knowledge. </p>
<p>Crossing “<a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html">planetary boundaries</a>”, such as for greenhouse gas concentrations, may have consequences for humanity disastrous enough to halt growth in personal wellbeing.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, economic modelling is useful to check that environmental policy is not driven solely by physical boundaries, and includes key human inputs like saving, technology and population growth in a reasonably coherent framework.</p>
<p>But our civilisation’s experiment with Earth’s environmental resources is unique, and that limits what economics or any other discipline can say. The effects of many decisions taken now will stay highly uncertain for decades or centuries. So academic policy guidance on long-run global sustainability will always contain much guesswork.</p>
<p>Given this unknowability, risk-averse policymakers will probably believe some physical, planetary boundaries do need to be taken seriously, as in our calculations.</p>
<p>But risk-loving policymakers will probably believe human ingenuity will solve all serious environmental problems, as it has been doing − so they would argue − for at least 200 years. And no one can easily prove their beliefs false.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33551/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Between 2007 & 2010, Jack Pezzey received A$87,500 from the Australian Department of Environment and Water Resources, through the Commonwealth Environmental Research Facility's Environmental Economics Research Hub, for a research project on the Economics of Greenhouse Gas Control.</span></em></p>“But who do you think’s right, Prof? The optimists or the pessimists?” At the end of my sustainability economics course in 2007, students were challenging me to end 20 years of professional fence-sitting…Jack Pezzey, Senior Fellow, Fenner School of Environment and Society , Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/232192014-02-14T06:05:35Z2014-02-14T06:05:35ZThe right kind of growth? Only if you stand to benefit from it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/41492/original/tmq2mw9k-1392317582.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Is more growth always the answer?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">adheds</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has claimed the UK is seeing not just any economic growth, but “<a href="http://www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2014/02/uk-seeing-signs-of-right-kind-of-economic-growth-cbi-chief/">the right kind of growth</a>”. But if there a right kind of growth, then there must be the wrong kind. So how would we tell the difference? </p>
<p>All the indications seem to be that nothing much has changed. We have the superheating of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/boriss-housing-plan-needs-the-rest-of-us-to-feed-the-beast-20799">south-east property bubble</a>, a government and opposition that worry about upsetting the City, no substantial changes in banking regulation or reward, and routine tax avoidance by wealthy people and large corporations. </p>
<p>The “business as usual” economic recovery being celebrated here seems no different in its complexion to the boom which preceded the crash, so why would any intelligent person assume that another crash won’t follow in time? </p>
<p>The answer, of course, is that those boosters who confidently predict sustained recovery are those who stand to benefit from it, either by their position in the country (the independent republic of London) or in hierarchies of pay, status and voice. The CBI? Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?</p>
<h2>Growing down</h2>
<p>So what might the right kind of growth actually look like? We could begin with some small things, such as the <a href="http://www.transitionnetwork.org/">Transition Towns</a> movement which began in Kinsale, Ireland and Totnes in Devon and started with the idea of an “energy descent plan” towards a zero carbon economy. </p>
<p>Or take the idea of “<a href="http://www.permaculture.org.uk">permaculture</a>” which suggests exploring sustainable production methods for food and raw materials which mimic natural systems. It also implies forms of human organisation which are based on co-operation and inter-dependence, such as ecovillages, <a href="https://theconversation.com/forget-fast-food-slow-down-for-better-well-being-11750">slow foods</a> or bioregionalism. Thinking like this presses us towards small state, city state or garden city forms of political organisation, and away from the idea that “growth” is a good in itself. </p>
<p><em>Decroissance</em> is a term coined by French radical economists to refer to and call for economic downscaling, or “degrowth” as it has been translated into English. The term has been prominent in debates about alternative economic systems in France, for example in a monthly magazine entitled <a href="http://www.ladecroissance.net/">La Decroissance</a>. Freeing economic thinking from the “tyranny of growth” is to point out that growth and ever-increasing consumption are unsustainable socially and ecologically.</p>
<h2>Gross national problem</h2>
<p>Measures of growth such as the Gross National Product only take into account the production and sale of commodified goods and services, ignoring the damaging effects on other things that we might value: justice, equality, democracy, human health and the health of ecosystems, quality of life and social relations.</p>
<p>Logically, the solution to social and ecological problems is not to make growth greener or more socially equitable, but rather to challenge the very principle of growth: to produce and consume less, especially in the Global North. Proponents of degrowth want to encourage political debates on the collective choices facing societies, and on alternative models of social and economic organisation; for example by <a href="https://theconversation.com/obsession-with-hard-work-is-a-dangerous-distraction-18809">questioning our relationship to work</a> and calling for much reduced working hours.</p>
<p>We might indeed have a look at a different measure entirely, Gross National Happiness. Used as the official measure of progress in Bhutan since the 1970s, it is intended to be a measure of environmental, physical, mental, social and political elements, as well as economic ones. It’s a very disputed measure of course, because it’s difficult to agree on the data or its interpretation, but its complexity reminds us what a narrow measure “growth” really is. </p>
<p>So, when the CBI and the Chancellor claim that growth is happening, and the news shows us a graph that looks like a smile, we ought to be more sceptical. Measuring the quality of life through the circulation of money has never been a good idea, particularly when the people doing the measuring have a lot of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/23219/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Parker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has claimed the UK is seeing not just any economic growth, but “the right kind of growth”. But if there a right kind of growth, then there must be the wrong…Martin Parker, Professor of Organisation and Culture, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212832013-12-10T19:42:46Z2013-12-10T19:42:46ZStill time to change Earth’s long-term forecast<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/37316/original/46tjd9dt-1386644424.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters decry the weak outcomes of the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil last year.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons/Aliencow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After a lifetime promoting sustainability – sadly, with limited success – last year I sat down to consider what will happen to my beloved world over the next 40 years. The main question I asked myself was whether I should continue worrying about the future during my final 20 to 25 years here on Earth.</p>
<p>My answer is in <a href="http://www.2052.info/a-5000-word-summary/">2052 – A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years</a>. The main message is simple: I predict that the world average temperature will surpass 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times – <a href="http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf">the internationally agreed danger threshold</a> – in 2052. And the temperature will continue rising, condemning our grandchildren to the likelihood of climate disaster in the second half of the 21st century.</p>
<p>This means that the global future will resemble one of the 12 scenarios from <a href="http://www.clubofrome.org/?p=326">The Limits to Growth</a>, which I co-authored in 1972. The world will resemble the “persistent pollution scenario”, with carbon dioxide as the “persistent” pollutant which, once emitted, resides in the atmosphere with a half-life of 100 years. (For more on the original Limits to Growth forecasts and how they fared compared to reality, you can read <a href="http://ecohist.history.ox.ac.uk//readings/Technological_limits/limits-to-growth-simulated.pdf">this CSIRO discussion paper</a> or this article <a href="https://theconversation.com/reaching-its-limits-can-the-global-economy-keep-growing-21191">in The Conversation</a>.)</p>
<p>I do not forecast an energy crisis, a resource crisis, a food crisis, a water crisis – but neither do I expect to see one of the more optimistic “sustainability” scenarios from Limits. I believe that man-made greenhouse gas emissions will prove to be the real problem.</p>
<p>This is because the human footprint will be smaller than most people expect. The future world population and gross domestic product (GDP) will be much lower than commonly forecast: the global population will peak at 8 billion around 2040, and the world GDP will only grow at 2% per year to 2052 – half historical rates.</p>
<p>There are two major reasons: women will choose to have fewer children and economies will find it more difficult to grow as they mature. As a consequence, humans will use fewer resources and rising greenhouse gas emissions will be the critical factor shaping our life on Earth. </p>
<p>Climate change will trump resource scarcity. One consequence will be a smaller world economy in 2052. Another will be more poverty than commonly forecast.</p>
<p>Climate emissions could easily have been reduced if humanity decided to take action, but humanity won’t because of myopia: simply look at the tepid goals and strategies adopted by the <a href="http://www.uncsd2012.org/">Rio+20 summit</a> last year and <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/21/rio-20-protesters-text-agreement">the negative reaction from the younger generation</a> of climate activists, who ripped up the negotiating text in protest.</p>
<p>Young people can see from past experience that there will be insufficient investment in solutions. A good life for our grandchildren is being sacrificed for short-term gain for ourselves. In modern democratic market economies, investments mainly flow to what is profitable, not what is needed.</p>
<p>The short-term nature of markets could be modified by legislation – with, for example, a tax on carbon. My point is that this is unlikely to happen in democratic society, because the voter is focused on short-term income growth. Most voters won’t support higher prices for gasoline and electricity. </p>
<p>Another solution could be new multi-national institutions (like the European Union or World Trade Organization) that impose a common long-term perspective on nation states. But a full 20 years of talking after Rio 1992 has produced little progress.</p>
<p>Luckily my forecast is a cliff hanger. </p>
<p>A small change in the human response would suffice to create much better life for our grandchildren. For example, shifting 1 to 2% of the global workforce and global capital into climate-friendly sectors would do the trick. </p>
<p>Workers could make electric cars rather than fossil-fuelled ones, build solar plants rather than coal-fired plants, and construct smaller well-insulated homes rather than big un-insulated ones. The income loss would be small, but the effect on distribution – the split between now and the future – would be big and desirable.</p>
<p>We also need to introduce systems of governance that place more emphasis on long-term effects. Global society needs structural long-termism to counter current short-termism: for example, a world climate bank for greenhouse gas emissions rights.</p>
<p>Concretely, in order to create a better world for our grandchildren, we should:</p>
<ul>
<li>have fewer children, especially in the rich world</li>
<li>reduce the ecological footprint, first by slowing the use of coal, oil and gas in the rich world</li>
<li>construct a low-carbon energy system in the poor world, paid for by the rich</li>
<li>create institutions that counter national short-termism.</li>
</ul>
<p>But most importantly, the coming crisis should be used to develop new goals for modern society – to remind us all that the purpose of society is to increase a total life satisfaction, not only to have each person contribute to the gross domestic product.</p>
<p><em>Jorgen Randers is one of the key speakers at <a href="http://mpel2g.net/">a full day symposium and evening Q&A discussion</a> at UNSW on Limits to Growth on 11 and 12 December. The Q&A discussion will be streamed live through <a href="https://plus.google.com/100119457085787615043/posts">Google Hangouts</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/user/UNSW">YouTube</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/21283/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jorgen Randers has received funding in the past from the Norwegian Research Council and the Toyota Motor Company.</span></em></p>After a lifetime promoting sustainability – sadly, with limited success – last year I sat down to consider what will happen to my beloved world over the next 40 years. The main question I asked myself…Jørgen Randers, Professor of Climate Strategy, BI Norwegian Business SchoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.