Abaco, IT'S THE NYT, frevvins' sake!
I don't expect anything logical or economically feasible or 'wise' to come from their keyboards...
Likewise Bloomberg on financial 'ideas,' too...
Totally dogmatic and information-free in just about everything they say.

But often amusing... Sort of like Krugman if he had half a brain and less mouth.

I voted your post as a "Best Of.." and here's why...
Thanks, Blackswan!

"Yes, it would be swell if the Greens could prevent the 'grow-to-the-sky' future of energy consumption, world population, pollution and Everything Else...

What they're missing is that the same people demanding those changes would also and at the same time, fight against anyone, anywhere, suffering a job loss or any economic hardship as a result of those policies!

I could try to imagine a 'future' where companies and individuals figure out how to be safe and happy without targeting 5-50% annual growth rates for their salaries or shipments.

Could anyone imagine a course like that in B-School?
Me, neither.
The key elements of such a discussion are in the post I marked as 'best of.' Thanks!"

That proves the point that HUMAN society must, of necessity, be different from animal "society."

One amazing source of energy that's being ignored is the thorium molten salt nuclear reactor, which is destined to replace the uranium/plutonium nuclear reactor. Once that's in place, all the hand wringing about greenhouse gases will go away, to be replaced by some other attempt at stopping growth.

Would he learn anything from such an outcome, and would he recant? If not, then the added years would be a waste.

GDP "growth" can be quite misleading. Between 1865 and WWI, we were mostly operating in a deflationary environment, where prices were FALLING. That means that you could have an increase in living standards (growth in volume) without necessarily having a growth in GDP. Thus, when Carnegie began manufacturing steel, it was selling for $120/ton. By the time US Steel was created, steel was selling for less than $20/ton, on a much, much larger base of steel output. It's not a trivial issue to decide on the metrics of economic growth.

In every true development, there was no movement to "improve" things. There was no movement to save the whales; there was just JD Rockefeller, with his Standard Oil. There was no movement to get rid of candles and gas lighting; there was just TA Edison, with his light bulb, and N Tesla with electric power. In fact, there was no group proposing how the future should look. All we had were inventors, doing their thing, with the result that the standard of living exploded. The punch line is that an inventor is a doer. He doesn't sit around and pontificate about how industries should be subsidized or destroyed to make way for the new and improved. He INVENTS the future. I'm bored to tears by all these pundits, talking about how the future can be improved, and they can't change a light bulb. The ones who can make a difference are those who will make a dent in the universe. The rest are ballast, not worth listening to.

My first impression was, "total bullhocky"

The assumption is that there is only so much to know or that we will at some point in time, know everything...Both are false. Creation or the Cosmos if you prefer, only continues with the creation of value seen as order; otherwise we are subjected to the forces of, (not heat related), entropy. There will always be something to learn, there will always be something to create, to improve. Creation is never static therefore conditions will always change and we must adapt or die.

Thank you, CG.

Jan

If I thought stopping GDP growth were the reasonable and sane approach to climate change, I too would find it hard to accept reality.

I love this comment and the pithy summary at the end.

The sidebar on the left makes it clear the author is talking about GDP rather than other definitions of growth.

The article is based on the false premise that the ratio of GDP to carbon emissions must fall into a narrow band. It's not true for two reasons:
1. Once we provide for people's basic needs, they start demanding more aesthetic things. For example, they don't want three phones but want to pay three times more for a really cool looking one. Businesses now need to figure out what people want rather than just find ways to get people more.
2. There are other sources of energy. If there weren't the world's ability to provide an affluent life for billions of people would end soon.

The article is a great example of applying the industrial mindset to the post-industrial world.

Growth is typically associated with GDP or at least the DOW Jones Industrial Average. No?

Growth is any economic improvement. So long as reason exists and is used, there must be growth.

There have been societies that didn't grow, but they were stagnant and generally died out without accomplishing anything. That's not how humans should live.

I bid three dozen! -- j
.

success doesn't require growth -- hey, we're retired and
spending our inheritors' money -- plus the gov't isn't doing
the COLA thing this year. . reminds me of a certain DOE
chief who "volunteered" to eliminate merit raises one year.
Hazel O'Leary if memory serves. . and she also did the
Hillary thing with classified info -- let it go;;; it doesn't
really matter. . Dummy. . so success is horizontal for us,
right now. . but Thomas Malthus was WRONG. -- j
.

I think that the author deliberately accepted postulates he knew to be false in order to present how unworkable 'no growth' would be.

That being said, there are many assertions that need to be set straight:
- No growth is not novel: is actually the default state of humankind (Australian abos are a good example). Think about it – there were very few nexus of development in the world. People from those locations conquered the rest of the world. Everywhere that they did not conquer remained Paleo-Neolithic (Central Africa, S. Am, Siberia, etc). If you leave us alone and do not introduce competition via warfare (the river valleys) or trade (Minoan empire, early Peru) then humans tend to remain at a steady state of no-growth.
- There have been Many declines in human tech. Farming was actually invented about 17K years ago, but then the Younger Dryas (mini-ice age) occurred and humans went back to a Mesolithic technology, because it was better suited to the cold weather. The Minoan age had Flush Toilets! and running hot and cold water. If Thera had not gone boom, we might have been on the Moon 1-2 thousand years ago. There was a proliferation of commerce and technology in the 3k-2K BC range. This fell in the 2M BC collapse. Again, we have the invention of the alphabet and differential gears at around 600 BC, but these are lost again. Then, finally we get recent enough for most people to call it ‘history’ – the Roman period, and subsequent collapse into the Middle Ages. At any of these points if you measure from the height of one civilization to the depth of the next period of collapse, you will find a decrease in per capita income, technology, and often population. So, yes, the Middle Ages were not as good as the Roman period. This is hardly unprecedented in the history of humankind.

So while I think that the author is using a straw horse well, he is also taking aim at the Achilles’ heel of lack of knowledge of the wavy growth pattern of human history.


Jan

I am leaning towards what you are saying about primal motivations like are in the lions when they see wildebeasts. The difference between african beasts and humans is that we have the ABILITY to think and go past the emotional desire to kill off any competitors, but to find ways to respect each other and live together and cooperate for the benefit of all. Over time, the civilizations that have taken advantage of this ability thrive, and the lion-wildebeast ones fail.

If we have the equivalent of the zombie apocalypse (more like a currency collapse than actual zombies !), there will be roving hordes again of people ( who were used to the now nonexistent government handouts) trying to take from those who have planned and saved.

Human nature when reduced to unthinking emotion isnt a lot different from animal nature really.

Agreed. I read it that he refuses to dispute the falsified "science" and that cowardice should be exposed and condemned.
He pretends to be an ally of free markets and he is a shill for the statists.
imo ;^)

What he is actually contemplating is a world without meaning or purpose. It's ridiculous from every standpoint. The sheer act of employment is a value-adding activity. The only way to exist is to add value through effort and activity. If one argues that no growth is the eventuality of the human race, it is a completely absurd argument which is in fact postulating the non-existence of humanity.

This is a very old story. When it comes to Mankind, a static anything dooms the race to a Dark Ages. It does, however, give power-mongers the opportunity to easily conquer and set up tribal fiefdoms and turning you and me into the pawns dedicated to increasing their power. Any attempt at innovation or betterment is rapidly put down using religion, environment or whatever is the anti-reason law of the time.