Discussion : Sustainable Growth

1. Can the economy grow forever? 

According to Daly (1998), the economy cannot grow forever. He argues that the economy is an part of the earth’s ecosystem that is non-growing, finite and materially limited. He further notes that the economy involves an even larger proportion of the whole ecosystem and will at some point reach a limit. Dietz and O’Neill (2013) argued that the current earth’s economy aims for more which fails on both environmental and social grounds. The authors argue that the earth is consuming resources at a rate half than they can be renewed. They not that this perpetual growth strategy will at some point reduce reserves of world’s natural capital like water and food. Another important finding by Dietz and O’Neill is that even though the world over the decades recorded impressive growth, nations continued to struggle with income inequality, poverty, and unemployment.

• What does it mean to develop an economy? How is this different from growth?

According to Daly, to develop an economy means to improve its citizens’ lives through qualitative improvement with no increase in throughput (Daly, 2008). This is different from growth which means using continually more throughput to get bigger. Daly calls his definition of development a “steady-state economy.”

• Do you think it’s feasible to establish a Steady State Economy? Explain your answer.

A steady-state economy is one that uses resources at a rate that is can replenish them and cannot emit waste at a rate faster than can be safely absorbed by the natural environment. It is possible to achieve a steady-state economy. This is through limiting the flow of materials using restrictive programs such as cap and trade and taxing emissions and resource depletion. The population growth rate also needs to be stabilized with better education and contraceptive. Measuring progress should move beyond GDP and GNP and adopting measures such as Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI).

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References

Daly, H. (2008, August 2). YouTube [Video]. https://youtu.be/jmkw2qSpHsc

Daly, H. (1998). Sustainable growth: An impossibility theorem. In Dryzek, J. S. & Schlosberg, D (Eds.), Debating the Earth: The environmental politics reader. p. 285 – 289. (n.d.).

Dietz, R., & O’Neill, D. (2013). Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources. London, England: Routledge.