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Page added on December 14, 2015
A World Without Growth
Could the world order survive without growing?
It’s hard to imagine now, but humanity made do with little or no economic growth for thousands of years. In Byzantium and Egypt, income per capita at the end of the first millennium was lower than at the dawn of the Christian Era. Much of Europe experienced no growth at all in the 500 years that preceded the Industrial Revolution. In India, real incomes per person shrank continuously from the early 17th through the late 19th century.
As world leaders gather in Paris to hash out an agreement to hold down and ultimately stop the emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases that threaten to make Earth increasingly inhospitable for humanity, there is a question that is unlikely to be openly discussed at the two-week conclave convened by the United Nations. But it is nonetheless hanging in the air: Could civilization, as we know it, survive such an experience again?
The answer, simply, is no.
Economic growth took off consistently around the world only some 200 years ago. Two things powered it: innovation and lots and lots of carbon-based energy, most of it derived from fossil fuels like coal and petroleum. Staring at climactic upheaval approaching down the decades, environmental advocates, scientists and even some political leaders have put the proposal on the table: World consumption must stop growing.
“This is a subtle and largely unacknowledged part of some folks’ environmental/climate plan,” said Michael Greenstone, who directs the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Sometimes it is not so subtle. The Stanford ecologist Paul Ehrlich has been arguing for decades that we must slow both population and consumption growth. When I talked to him on the phone a few months ago, he quoted the economist Kenneth Boulding: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
The proposal that growth must stop appears frequently along the leftward edge of the environmental movement, in publications like Dissent and the writing of the environmental advocate Bill McKibben. It also shows up in academic literature.
For instance, Peter Victor of York University in Canada published a study titled “Growth, degrowth and climate change: A scenario analysis,” in which he compared Canadian carbon emissions under three economic paths to the year 2035.
Limiting growth to zero, he found, had a modest impact on carbon spewed into the air. Only the “de-growth” situation — in which Canadians’ income per person shrank to its level in 1976 and the average working hours of employed Canadians declined by 75 percent — managed to slash emissions in a big way.
And it is creeping into international diplomacy, showing up forcefully in India’s demand for “carbon space” from the rich world, which at its logical limit would demand that advanced nations deliver negative emissions — suck more carbon out of the atmosphere than they put in — so the world’s poor countries could burn their way to development as the rich countries have done for the last two centuries.
Working for the Sustainable Development Commission, set up in 2001 to advise the Labour government in Britain, Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey produced a nifty calculation. Accept that citizens of developing nations are entitled to catch up with the living standards of Europeans by midcentury, and assume that Europe will grow, on average, by 2 percent a year between now and then.
To stay within the 2 degree Centigrade (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) average temperature increase that scientists generally consider the upper bound to avoid catastrophic climate change would require the world economy in 2050 to emit no more than six grams of carbon dioxide for every dollar of economic output. To put that in perspective, today the United States economy emits 60 times that much. The French economy, one of the most carbon-efficient because it is powered extensively by nuclear energy, emits 150 grams per dollar of output.
Drawing what he saw as the inevitable conclusion, Professor Jackson published a book in 2009 called “Prosperity Without Growth” (Earthscan/Routledge).
Whatever the ethical merits of the case, the proposition of no growth has absolutely no chance to succeed. For all the many hundreds of years humanity survived without growth, modern civilization could not. The trade-offs that are the daily stuff of market-based economies simply could not work in a zero-sum world.
“It would be a nonstarter to have zero growth within a given country in terms of creating conflict between groups,” Professor Greenstone told me. “If one were to take this further and make it international, it feels like an even bigger stretch.”
Let’s examine what our fossil-fueled growth has provided us. It has delivered gains in living standards in even the poorest regions of the world.
But that’s only the beginning. Economic development was indispensable to end slavery. It was a critical precondition for the empowerment of women.
Indeed, democracy would not have survived without it. As Martin Wolf, the Financial Times commentator has noted, the option for everybody to become better off — where one person’s gain needn’t require another’s loss — was critical for the development and spread of the consensual politics that underpin democratic rule.
Zero growth gave us Genghis Khan and the Middle Ages, conquest and subjugation. It fostered an order in which the only mechanism to get ahead was to plunder one’s neighbor. Economic growth opened up a much better alternative: trade.
The Oxford economist Max Roser has some revealing charts that show the deadliness of war across the ages. It was a real killer in the era of no growth. Up to half of all deaths among hunter-gatherers, horticulturalists and other ancient cultures were caused by conflict.
The bloody 20th century — stage for two world wars, the Holocaust and other war-based genocides — still doesn’t even come close.
Naomi Klein, a champion of the leftward fringe newly converted to the environmental cause, gleefully proposes climate change as an opportunity to put an end to capitalism. Were she right, I doubt it would bring about the workers’ utopia she appears to yearn for. In a world economy that does not grow, the powerless and vulnerable are the most likely to lose. Imagine “Blade Runner,” “Mad Max” and “The Hunger Games” brought to real life.
The good news is that taking action against climate change need do no such thing. It will not be easy, but we can glimpse technological paths that will allow civilization to keep growing and afford the world economy a positive-sum future.
More than how to stop growth, the main question brought out by climate change is how to fully develop and deploy sustainable energy technologies — in a nutshell, to help the world’s poor, and everybody else, onto a path to progress that doesn’t rely on burning buried carbon.
11 Comments on "A World Without Growth"
onlooker on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 7:53 am
Herein lies the crucible between doomers and cornucopians. The latter believes the arguments of this article, the former do not. This is pie in the sky. First as has been noted, a Large scale Renewable Infrastructure would require vast expenditures in money and energy that at this point we no longer have. Not only that this article implies that growth is good. Nothing could be further from the truth now. With each year of a strong and robust world economy we are doing further harm to Earth in a myriad of ways. Our insistence on continued prodigious consumption in the form of growth and our inability not only to not reduce our population but to continue to further populate the Earth, makes the argument proposed here ludicrous. What is more the basis for growth fossil fuels almost certainly by itself precludes further growth. This article is a complete and utter fantasy.
onlooker on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 7:55 am
A little correction.
What is more the basis for growth fossil fuels almost certainly by itself precludes further growth as its overall peak is already here.
adamc18 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:17 am
It surely isn’t a matter of CHOOSING to end growth; it is a matter of FACING UP to the fact that it is going to end, whether we want to or not, because we are over-consuming, over-polluting and there are just too many of us.
It would be wonderful if everyone one earth could live in luxurious homes, drive fast cars on good, uncrowded roads, fly in private planes to long vacations in fabulously perfect locations, and we could all be beautiful and stay permanently in our 20s etc etc. But it is a fantasy.
Economic growth is very clearly benefitting only the richest 0.1%. Pretty much everyone else on Earth is seeing no benefit whatever and may well be sliding further into poverty. Writing for the NY Times probably blurs the perception that the vast majority of people always were, are today, and always will be poor. If you earn $16,000 you are in the top 10% (700million) globally while $85,000 puts you in the top 70million, or 1% of humanity.
paulo1 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:49 am
There will first be growth in war and the oppression of scapegoats before there is a realization that we are in a de-growth environment. After that, we’ll all be too busy just ‘getting by’ to do much about it. I just hope radio makes a comeback and people put their goddamn stupid phones away and start thinking and conversing once again.
penury on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 8:52 am
I think that it is no longer an option for humans, growth? As defined by humans growth is not possible, resource limitations will put a stop to the destruction of the habitat by humans and put an end to the era of excessive consumption,
peakyeast on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 9:31 am
As mentioned “The collapse is here – it is just unevenly distributed”.
I wonder how far this feature can be extrapolated.
Perhaps we will see a complete collapse outside the chosen countries – while those within fares reasonably well.
This way the rich and highly weaponized countries can be the winners while reducing the population (and consumption) everywhere else.
After all those countries that are not the chosen ones cant do much else but trying to migrate or drop dead.
John D on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 3:41 pm
Some observations. First, the author seems to feel that those who clamor for no growth are left leaning. He should consider that they are not necessarily left leaning, they are leaning toward an understanding of physics.
Secondly, the author concludes (rightfully) that society is predicated on growth and will not willingly decide not to grow, as the alternative is collapse. He also recognizes that the world is finite. This should have led the author to conclude that the only possible option left is unwilling collapse. Obviously a path he was afraid to travel down.
Harquebus on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 5:56 pm
“There is no point in saving the planet if we ruin the economy doing it.” — former NSW Premier Morris Iemma
Constant GDP growth is, like a cancer, killing our host.
makati1 on Mon, 14th Dec 2015 7:22 pm
peaky, yes we are in collapse now. The world GDP is actually falling, not growing. As for which countries are “chosen” you are in for a shock if you believe they are in the 1st world.
We are long past any chance of a ‘normal’ future. Climate is going to continue to change over the rest of the life times of us alive today, even if we were to stop burning fossil fuels this minute.
War is our immediate future. It will grow and spread until there are few countries not involved. There will be no winners. What is left will not support life as we know it. Probably few, if any, humans.
This story began millenia ago with farming and we are just lucky (?) enough to see it’s end. Best we can do is prepare and try to mitigate it’s pain for us and ours.
Davy on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 5:38 am
Chinese Officials Admit To “Significantly Faking And Overstating” Economic Data
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-14/chinese-officials-admit-significantly-faking-and-overstating-economic-data
“According to China Daily, several local officials in China’s Northeast region sought to explain dramatic economic drops in their areas by admitting they had faked economic data in the past few years to show high growth when the real numbers were much lower, Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.”
“Three years ago Liaoning province’s GDP growth was reported at 9.5 percent, but its current figure?over the first three quarters of this year?is just 2.7 percent. Jilin’s growth was reported at 12 percent three years ago, but its current rate is 6.3 percent in the same period.”
“China Daily also notes that if the local financial reports were true, some single counties’ GDP would have surpassed Hong Kong. An earlier audit by the National Audit Office found one county in Liaoning that reported annual fiscal revenues 127 percent higher than the actual number.”
“Why? As a staff member in the Jilin provincial finance department, who asked not to be identified, told China Daily that in past years, local officials competed each other to lure external investment projects. They reported the promised investment value, whether it had been achieved or not, as the investment figure. So the bigger the “reported” growth, the higher the likelihood of being awarded the project, which in turn means millions in government funds being directly embezzled by corrupt local officials, money which would promptly then end up in some duplex in NYC, San Fran or Vancouver.”
“What was left unsaid is that if “data had not been inflated”, it would be negative and instead of 7% GDP growth we would be asking just how big China’s GDP contraction will be this year.We bring all this up in the aftermath of this weekend’s “strong” Chinese industrial production and retail sales data because it too is completely fabricated and goalseeked. Only now there is no doubt.”
theedrich on Tue, 15th Dec 2015 2:09 pm
Some species instinctively restrict their population growth when faced with limited resources. Primates do not. Whether monkeys, chimpanzees or humans, we prefer war. All serious study on the subject among primates has shown this. Nature has some kind of a built-in check on eco-overload in all fauna for the case of no-growth.
Among humans, team “sports” are almost all stylized warfare or duels. This also includes “mild” sports such as baseball. Even chess (the word is derived from the Persian shah, meaning “king”) is an intellectualized form of war. Combat is beloved by humanity, and the winner is always glorified, the loser forgotten if not demonized, with World War II being a perfect example. In that (“good”) war, as partially in Iraq #2, the true (albeit unconscious) primary aim was the annihilation of civilians, and only indirectly, soldiers. The great epics of past poetic literature — Homer, Virgil’s Æneid, Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, the Chanson de Roland — are all about war and conflict. The massively profitable cinematic series, Star Wars fits in the same category. TV dramas incessantly depict violent death and mayhem because they sell. (Chic flicks are often about how the heroine can snag the alpha male who has grabbed the brass ring of power by winning over rivals in some, often implicit, contest.) The contemporary history of inner-city Chicago is simply a demonstration of the same primate war drive.
Naturally, the Manichean lefties and the hypocritical elites deny the genetic component, because they imagine (or pretend) that that evil god, “culture”, has invented and causes war. But they themselves, like religious types everywhere, surreptitiously seek to engage in the mass murder of the enemy — witness the history of Communism. And they are blind to the deeper causes at work within themselves.
Currently ISIL, Al Qaeda and assorted other Mohammedan groups are wreaking havoc in MENA and elsewhere. While many Western “experts” attribute this to the “wrong” interpretation of Mohammedanism, they fail to recognize the exhilating subcortical passions surging out of the ancient primate deep brain, surcharged with adrenalin, endorphins and other hormones. Killing is orgiastically exciting, as is even the anxiety due to the clear risk of death (death being nature’s true purpose here). Those too squeamish to acknowledge this ought to read the Old Testament of the “Holy” Bible. It glorifies warfare in the name of Yahweh. And the evangelical types insist it was all the will of their god. Actually, they are right, because it is “Nature and Nature’s god” (as per the Declaration of Independence) who implanted the war drive not only in primates but in other creatures much longer ago than even the origin of the mammals.
So one way or another we can look forward to the same population-reducing mechanism, carried out with the same type of propaganda, which has always worked so well for us in the past: war.