Thread by @Noahpinion

1/Today's @bopinion is about why "zero-growth" environmentalism is the wrong kind of environmentalism.

bloomberg.com/view/articles/…

2/We need growth in order to save the world's poor people from leading horrifying lives of grinding crushing poverty.

3/But a small, vocal minority of environmentalists thinks that we must sacrifice global growth in order to save the planet: foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/12/why…

4/Zero-growth environmentalists claim that growth can be stopped by rich countries, without hurting poor countries.

That is wrong. Most economic growth now happens in poor countries, not rich ones.

5/Poor countries also now produce the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, rich-world emissions are declining.

Zero-growth environmentalism will hit these poor countries HARD.

6/Zero-growth environmentalists may think that after growth is halted, a massive program of global redistribution can substitute for growth and offer the people of Africa, India, etc. a kinda-sorta-OK standard of living.

This won't happen.

7/In fact, zero-growth environmentalism - even with international redistribution - would ultimately be bad for global resource use, because economic growth is what causes fertility rates to fall.

8/Instead of zero-growth environmentalism, which is bad and a non-starter, we must place our hope in progress.

Better renewable energy, and strong government incentives to switch to renewable energy.

9/Will alternative energy save us from climate change? No. But if we try hard, it will limit it, a lot. And the resulting continuation of global economic growth will limit fertility rates, which will limit the use of other resources like fresh water.

10/Zero-growth environmentalism looks a lot like the philosophy of Thanos, the all-powerful Marvel supervillain who kills off half the Universe to prevent resource overuse.

Instead, Thanos should have just given everyone clean energy tech!

(end)

forbes.com/sites/solitair…