Continuing on my current theme of interest, the climate change and energy crisis, Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson takes a very scientific approach to tackling the problem of limited resources; it discusses some very profound and difficult questions one by one and meticulously analyzes the issues, coming up with what are pretty much airtight conclusions. The key concept throughout the book is “prosperity”; what it is often seen to mean, what it really means, how to achieve it, and is it possible for everyone on the planet to prosper despite clear planetary limits – resource as well as pollution capacity – that are becoming painfully apparent.
As we saw during the financial crisis, economic growth is essential to a working world; de-growth is unstable and when growth falters, we basically panic. Is this the right response? Should we be myopically focused on growth? Now, nobody in their right mind would argue that we need to grow our economies for growth’s sake; that growth has to produce some desirable effects. And to a degree, it does – from life expectancy to happiness, the very poor countries tend to be worse off than the rich, though there are exceptions.
Yet, infinite growth on a finite planet is by definition unsustainable. Some have pointed out that we can continue to grow the economy by decoupling, by focusing more on services whose growth does not increase emissions or resource usage. That sounds nice in theory, but Jackson debunks that myth quite thoroughly. While it’s true the carbon intensity of modern economies has decreased, it has only been a modest relative decoupling at best. To reduce resource usage and emissions, we have to achieve material absolute decoupling. There is simply no evidence that this is taking place anywhere on the planet and after covering considerable amount of evidence on this, Jackson notes:
The truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for a world of 9 billion people.In this context, simplistic assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will allow us to stabilize the climate or protect against resource scarcity are nothing short of delusional. Those who promote decoupling as an escape route from the dilemma of growth need to take a closer look at the historical evidence – and at the basic arithmetic of growth.
A clear strength of Prosperity Without Growth that I appreciated is that Tim Jackson is careful to meticulously analyze each point he makes, and to back them up with hard data. The inevitable conclusion is that business as usual is simply not an option; either we adapt now or the adaptation will be forced upon us in a vastly more painful way. Jackson offers some glimpses of hope and lays out some prerequisites that need to happen – such as introducing ecological limits to economy, as the language of economy is currently “ecologically illiterate”. Other insights that I found very valuable were the lessons on the damaging culture of consumerism and how the entire modern economic model of how the world works needs to be rethought. It even touches on the topic of innovation, which can have surprisingly damaging effects if done wrong.
This is another book I can wholeheartedly recommend. Compared to the previous book on the same general topic, the Ecotechnic Future, this book focuses on more immediate issues and understanding the fundamentals of modern economy and why our whole way of thinking about growth needs to change. The fundamental problem we face – if we want to avoid an uncontrolled descent which can get very ugly indeed – is to either make growth sustainable or de-growth stable. Under the current economics, both seem like very difficult, if not impossible goals – which is why some of the fundamental thinking needs to be changed and our focus should be more on sustainable prosperity rather than economic growth; this is sort of returning to fundamentals since it was prosperity that the economic growth was supposed to deliver. If and when it doesn’t, it’s about time to look elsewhere.
Ps. A few months back, I listened to Tim Jackson talk about this topic in Melbourne. Head over to here to see the video of that talk; it’s a good one.
