Can a dose of recession solve climate change?

Subverting the growth-at-all-costs model is appealing but not politically feasible

Britain has just suffered its weakest period of growth since the recession of the early 1990s. The economy “ground to a halt” in the second quarter of the year – the worst performance since the first quarter of 1992. The signs are that the news will get even more grim in the second half of this year.

Note the deliberate use of language. In the world of conventional economics, countries suffer periods of weak expansion but enjoy spells of strong growth. When the economy fails to grow that is axiomatically a worse performance than when it does. It is “grim” news that Britain may fulfil the technical definition of recession – two consecutive quarters of negative growth – in the second half of 2008.

This may strike some as a strange way of looking at things. Sure, the global economy is slowing. But what’s so bad about that? Is it, in fact, bad news that the world economy will no longer grow at its recent rate of 5% a year? And if the answer to that question is “no”, wouldn’t it be good news if this modest retrenchment was turned into a full-blown slump? Indeed, why stop there? Shouldn’t those who fear for the future of the planet pursue something akin to the Great Depression of the 1930s?

Guardian