But even just considering carbon emissions, which have reduced in intensity
Anyone have a source to support that claim? It sounds like something that could be true on a per-capita basis, at least in “developed countries” over a cherry-picked time interval.
Between 1990 and 2023 CO2 emissions globally have grown by 66.27%, while GDP has grown by 179.22%. Most developed countries even had economic growth with falling emissions.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-and-gdp?country=~OWID_WRL
Well, that’ll do it. Thanks! Whether that’s what the author meant is another question…
Yes, that’s what they meant. I thought the factoid was quite well-known by now.
Economic growth is becoming decoupled from resource use. The problem is that it’s agonizingly slow, so that the decoupling remains stubbornly relative: the resource throughput is still going up, just less quickly. The holy grail is absolute decoupling. No sign of that in sight, notwithstanding optimistic predictions about “green growth”. This lack of actual progress is the main argument for dumping growth as an indicator.
The basic argument here is that instead of talking about degrowth and sacrifice (regardless of their necessity), we should rather focus on the positive agenda of wellbeing, which stands a better chance politically. I find the argument convincing.
Listening recommendation: Club of Rome podcast. High quality discussions, unfortunately very irregular episodes. The author was a guest on several of them.
