I am now in a very hot and humid Kyoto having left Australia yesterday in weather that was in some places 20 or more degrees Celsius above the norm for early Spring. The heat here and back home at this time of year is rather scary given what it portends. I also do not have…
Degrowth
by Brian Czech
The only way to arrive at a safe, sustainable, steady state economy is with substantial behavioral and political reform. Those two categories of reform correspond roughly with the demand side and supply side of the economy, respectively. In the simplest of terms, people must conscientiously demand less—wealthy people in particular—and policymakers must help ensure that the supply of goods and services is not in a state of overshoot.
My focus here is on the supply side.
The post Defining “Economic Development” in Statutory Law: Content and Strategy appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
by Kendrick Hardaway and John Mulrow
In Chicago, the great dome atop the Museum of Science and Industry rotunda is emblazoned with these words:
Science discerns the laws of nature
Industry applies them to the needs of man
The inscription’s lofty rhetoric hides a powerful assumption that is broadly internalized in industrial societies today: that the “needs of man” are unlimited,
The post Degrowth for Engineering and Engineering for Degrowth appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
by Rosalie Bull
I’m having an ongoing conversation with a friend about the merits and drawbacks of degrowth as a climate action strategy. She is easily the most astute climate thinker I know, with insights available only to those deeply immersed in the nuances of climate finance and decarbonization. She’s wary of the degrowth movement, as are many prominent players in the climate transition. She views it as an unhelpful distraction from humanity’s efforts to grapple with the climate crisis.
The post Degrowth in a Green-Growth World appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
Last Monday, I wrote about the global need for us to abandon meat production for food, and, instead take up plant-based diets. Many people interpreted that argument as a personal attack on their dietary freedom, which indicates they fell into a fallacy of composition trap and declined to see the global issue. As part of…
This is Part 6 of a series on Deep Adaptation, Degrowth and MMT that I am steadily writing. I have previously written in this series that there will need to be a major change in the composition of output and the patterns of consumption if we are to progress towards a sustainable future. It will…
by Brian Czech
On a scale of one to ten, COP15—the UN Biodiversity Conference in Montreal last month—was a solid five. That may not sound like a ringing endorsement, but it represents significant progress from prior COPs, which dabbled along in the one or two range for the better part of three decades. The progress was evident from the start, when UN Secretary General António Guterres kicked off the conference by noting,
The post COP15: The Good, the Bad, and the Smugly appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
I use World Bank data to test Nitzan and Bichler's 'stagflation thesis' --- the idea that inflation in the midst of economic stagnation is the norm.
The post Is Stagflation the Norm? appeared first on Economics from the Top Down.
by Yiran Cheng
China, as the world’s second-largest economy and a rising superpower, is an integral part of the discussion if a steady state economy is ever to be achieved at a global scale. China’s environmental impact grows by the day, yet serious consideration about intentionally slowing economic growth has seldom occurred, let alone the possibility of a sustained 负增长, the Mandarin translation of “degrowth”.
This is not to say China is oblivious to its environmental toll.
The post Prospects for 负增长 Toward a Steady State Economy in China appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
by Christy Shaw
There seem to be encouraging signs that more and more average Americans are speaking out and taking action to oppose uncontrolled growth. Concerned citizens are sounding the alarm that too much growth is doing far more harm than good in their towns, cities and communities.
While there does not yet appear to be a coordinated nationwide coalition of activism, there are definitely increasing signs of grassroots efforts to push back against the all-too common,
The post Emerging Signs of Grassroots Resistance to Growth appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.