Is Endless Growth Really What We Should Be Striving For?
Although there are some that still deny that all of the activity of drilling, burning, melting, and building we’ve done as a species has had any effect on the environment, most thinking people are coming around to realizing that the majority of scientists who claim that climate change is something to be concerned about are probably more trustworthy than the oil magnates who say it isn’t. And since many people have concluded that the pollution we put into the environment does, in fact, have repercussions, we are realizing that the endless economic growth sold to us by those who are reaping the greatest benefits of it may not be the economic goal we should be striving for.
“Mainstream economics views endless economic growth as a must,” says Kate Raworth in Doughnut Economics, “but nothing in nature grows forever, and the attempt to buck that trend is raising tough questions in high-income but low-growth countries. It may not be hard to give up having GDP growth as an economic goal, but it is going to be far harder to overcome our addiction to it. Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive; what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow. That radical flip in perspective invites us to become agnostic about growth and to explore how economies that are currently financially, politically and socially addicted to growth could learn to live with or without it.”