Researchers make the case for shift from economic growth to human well-being within planetary limits
Researchers make the case for shift from economic growth to human well-being within planetary limits
For more than a century, nations have measured societal gains in terms of economic growth. But a new review published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health in January 2025 questions that convention. It concludes that humanity would benefit more if it aims for ecological sustainability and stays wit...
- New research concludes that humanity would benefit more if it aims for ecological sustainability and stays within the limits of what Earth can provide, rather than pursuing relentless growth.
- The success of capitalism depends on the push for growth, which requires the use of resources and energy, and comes at the cost of ecological damage.
- Economists have proposed alternatives that focus on staying within a set of planetary boundaries that define the safe operating space for humanity.
- The review, published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health, draws on more than 200 resources from the scientific literature.
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A sustainable relationship with the earth could still have room for growth.
As technology becomes more resource efficient within our planetary budget, output and capacity will grow within sustainable bounds.
Once we have built a sustainable relationship with the earth, we can pursue sustainable relationships with other planets enabled by an exploration budget.
This is pie in the sky, at least on my reading of the evidence. I wish that were not the case.
Yes, economic growth is slowly being decoupled from energy use and resource throughputs, i.e. the things disrupting our planet. But the decoupling is relative, not absolute. The absolute indicators continue, inexorably, to go in the wrong direction. For now, and surely into the medium-term future, economic growth is simply not on a sustainable trajectory. And yet our culture remains obsessed with it, irrationally.
As for exploring the stars, well, I say we put that aside and consider it at a later date.
I fully agree that economic growth is not on a sustainable trajectory.
I agree that we need some serious degrowth to regain a responsible relationship with our planet.
I'm just saying that once we have a sustainable relationship, slow and moderated growth will become possible again.
Nearly everything in my first comment was in the context of the "later date" that you refer to. I am just used to thinking of "in a few hundred years" as being near-term and my language reflects that.
That's fair. The question I always have is, Why? Why is this abstract indicator so important? It's routinely invoked like some kind of religious incantation, as some kind of obvious good, when it plainly has major limitations.
Why not instead use indicators that measure the concrete things we're really aiming for? Things like education, health, food security, environmental quality, etc?
The Human Development Index, to take the obvious example, is a much more meaningful indicator than economic growth. Imagine what might happen if we could persuade ourselves to judge everything by the HDI, and if politicians competed on their success at improving the HDI. All kind of possibilities would open up.
All living things grow.
Maybe not net growth, especially after a certain age, because parts of them also die.
Growth is a fundamental part of change and adaptation. Insisting on unmitigated net growth is the philosophy of cancer. Healthy cells still grow and reproduce, but only within sustainable parameters.
Growth is not always good. Too much growth requires taking so much from your surroundings that you destabilize yourself. In the other direction, no growth is a recipe for being rigidly unadaptable as the Earth beneath your feet changes. The Earth will never stop changing, and we must grow to adapt if we wish to survive. If we grow too quicky that then Earth and our ecosystem context cannot grow and adapt with us. If we grow too slowly, we cannot adapt to an ever-changing environment (especially now that our philosophy of unmitigated growth is causing that environment to change at an unprecedented rate).
Cancer and capitalism believe in unmitigated Brahma for Brahma's sake. This growth and creation in the human realm takes and takes from the natural realm at an unsustainable pace. Zero Brahma is as unbalanced as letting Brahma run unchecked.
"De-growth", in my mind, is simply allowing the other two forces (Vishnu, the preservation of our surroundings, and Shiva, the destruction of our bad habits) to rebalance our out-of-control Brahma. It only exists as the net effect of all three forces. Degrowth is something that we desperately need if we wish to regain equilibrium with our ecosystem.
Note as well that unrestrained growth within an economic context is Brahma, but to feed that growth we must destroy the world around us, which ecologically presents as Shiva. Depending on the perspectives, each of these forces can present as others. The most toxic part of capitalism's insistence on unmitigated Brahma is that it is entirely limited to the economic context.
Indeed. A push for CONSTANT growth is not all that workable in the next few decades possibly. But once humankind starts transitioning to an existence beyond planet earth, even if it's just o'neill cylinder space habitats in orbit around the planet, lots of growth opportunities will open up. Heck, just this solar system could eventually fit hundreds of billions of humans in a century or two, and combine that with massive improvements in technology, it's easy to see hugely improved growth.