Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #postgrowth

Here is an interesting #postgrowth thought experiment.

1. Portugal achieves much higher life expectancy than the United States, with $38,000 less GDP per capita. How? By distributing income more fairly, and investing in universal public healthcare and other key social goods.

2. That means that from the perspective of human welfare, $38,000 of America’s p/c income is effectively “wasted.” That's $13 trillion per year for the US economy as a whole. $13 trillion worth of ecological pressure, that adds nothing, in and of itself, to human welfare.

3. $13 trillion is enough to do three things:

a) raise everyone in the world above the $7.40/day poverty line.

b) fund universal public healthcare for the entire global South, at the standards of Costa Rica - one of the best in the world.

c) have $3 trillion left over.

Read 6 tweets

Manuel Grebenjak

@ManuelGrebe

First they ignore you...
#Degrowth is now officially in phase 3 of 4.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz openly criticised "postgrowth" today in a public conversation at the #WEF2020 in Davos. He made some interesting statements.
derstandard.at/story/20001137…

He talked about a debate he saw where postgrowth ideas were discussed and where they asked if it could not be "good for a country when there's no economic growth any more" and "wouldn't it be better to measure the happiness of the population and not economic growth".

Kurz said that sounded romantic to him but went on speaking about the ageing population in Europe and said "happiness doesn't pay pensions".
"If we don't have growth, if we don't manage to stay competitive as the EU, then good night welfare state and European achievements."

Read 6 tweets

We need a rapid transition to 100% clean energy. But clean energy is not a ticket to "green growth".

Clean energy requires a huge increase in extractive mining. And the more we grow, the more aggressive it will be.

foreignpolicy.com/2019/09/06/the…

Here's my conclusion:

"If we’re after a greener, more sustainable economy, we need to disabuse ourselves of the fantasy that we can carry on growing energy demand at existing rates." #postgrowth

Today I came across this scientific article that confirms the conclusion with modeling - hot off the press. A global clean energy system is viable, but only if rich nations consume less energy. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

Dr Simon Mair

@simon_mair

@Leigh_Phillips

A thread of my reactions to @Leigh_Phillips attack on degrowth in his @_ourEconomy article. #degrowth #postgrowth #ecologicaleconomics #Socialism

It is an example of the way pro-growth socialist environmentalism often dresses up social democratic & capitalist ideas in radical rhetoric. Most of the logic undermines socialism as much as degrowth.

For example Phillips argues that CFCs got regulated away, and we didn't have to give up hairspray. For him, this is an example of how regulating markets can lead to absolute decoupling. Ergo we don't need degrowth. But by the same logic, we don't need socialism either.

Read 15 tweets

@IPBES

Some excellent words from the recent @IPBES report on how to reverse biodiversity collapse:

"A key constituent of sustainable pathways is steering away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth..." 1/3

"...That implies incorporating the reduction of inequalities into development pathways, reducing overconsumption and waste and addressing environmental impacts such as externalities of economic activities, from the local to the global scales..." 2/3

"...Such an evolution would also entail a shift beyond standard economic indicators such as gross domestic product to include those able to capture more holistic, long-term views of economics and quality of life." #postgrowth 3/3

I have a new article out in Sustainable Development today. It demonstrates that there is an empirical contradiction in the #SDGs between Goal 8 (GDP growth) and the ecological objectives of reducing resource use and preventing global warming over 2C. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.100…

"The paper proposes specific changes to SDG targets and presents alternative pathways for realizing human development objectives that rely on reducing inequality—both within nations and between them—rather than aggregate growth."

Here is a read-only link to the full text. Check it out and let me know what you think. #postgrowth #degrowth onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.10…

This image shows global material resource use in tonnes. The red line is what ecologists deem to be a roughly sustainable level of consumption. We overshot that threshold about 20 years ago, and resource use has only accelerated since then. #postgrowth #degrowth

This chart shows the relationship between global material use and GDP. Since 2000, material use has been rising at a faster rate than GDP. Instead of the "decoupling" that green-growthers hope for, a dramatic re-coupling has occurred. #postgrowth #degrowth

And here we see that resource overshoot is due almost entirely to excess consumption in rich countries. The red line is the planetary boundary rendered in per capita terms. Rich countries exceed it four times over. #postgrowth #degrowth

Read 4 tweets

This scatterplot illustrates the ecological efficiency of nations when it comes to delivering social outcomes. The goal is a social score of 1 and biophysical impact less than 1. No nations succeed, but some (labelled here) come very close.

The picture is even more hopeful if we exclude qualitative indicators (like life satisfaction, equality, social support, democratic quality and employment), which I argue can be achieved in most cases without any additional biophysical pressure.

Full article available here. First 50 downloads are free. tandfonline.com/eprint/hXT9yuz… #postgrowth #degrowth

This is a huge breakthrough. A new interactive model that allows users to test de-growth scenarios (and policies like #UBI, job guarantee, shorter working week) for results on emissions, unemployment, inequality etc. Check it out. degrowth.org/2018/10/29/eur… #postgrowth #degrowth

@KateRaworth

A few of you might be interested in looking at this, @KateRaworth, @MartinRavallion, @AnnPettifor, @meadwaj, @labourlewis

@JKSteinberger

And of course, for the emissions projections, @JKSteinberger, @KevinClimate, @AliceClimate and @Peters_Glen