Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Jason Hickle - Why Growth Can’t Be Green

New data proves you can support capitalism or the environment—but it’s hard to do both.


This started out alarming but got better at the end.


These problems throw the entire concept of green growth into doubt and necessitate some radical rethinking. Remember that each of the three studies used highly optimistic assumptions. We are nowhere near imposing a global carbon tax today, much less one of nearly $600 per metric ton, and resource efficiency is currently getting worse, not better. Yet the studies suggest that even if we do everything right, decoupling economic growth with resource use will remain elusive and our environmental problems will continue to worsen.


Preventing that outcome will require a whole new paradigm. High taxes and technological innovation will help, but they’re not going to be enough. The only realistic shot humanity has at averting ecological collapse is to impose hard caps on resource use, as the economist Daniel O’Neill recently proposed. Such caps, enforced by national governments or by international treaties, could ensure that we do not extract more from the land and the seas than the Earth can safely regenerate. We could also ditch GDP as an indicator of economic success and adopt a more balanced measure like the genuine progress indicator (GPI), which accounts for pollution and natural asset depletion. Using GPI would help us maximize socially good outcomes while minimizing ecologically bad ones.

1 comment:

Konrad said...

“Preventing that outcome will require a whole new paradigm. High taxes and technological innovation will help, but they’re not going to be enough. The only realistic shot humanity has at averting ecological collapse is to impose hard caps on resource use, as the economist Daniel O’Neill recently proposed.”

Nonsense. France is imposing caps on resource use by continually raising taxes on fuel. Macron says he is screwing the masses in order to “wean France off fossil fuels.” And yet, since the Macron government offers no alternatives (e.g. more electric trains and buses) the endless tax increases do nothing to reduce pollution levels. All they do is further widen the gap between the rich and the rest, which is the taxes' real purpose.

Moreover tax increases are useless for countries like the USA, whose governments have no need for tax revenue.

We do indeed need a new paradigm. One in which we do not value creditors over debtors, owners over workers, and rentiers over tenants. A new paradigm that views life and the world in cyclical terms, rather than linear terms, and thus favors renewable energy, while bringing back debt jubilees. A new paradigm that defines “growth” as spiritual profit, rather than monetary profit. A new paradigm that does not regard money as physical and limited. All this is beyond the imagination of the article's author.

Contrary to the article, growth can be green. We just need to change our basic assumptions about life.