Modified from the original published in Our Daily Planet (ourdailyplanet.com) on March 21, 2020.
In 2013, the United Nations designated March 20th as the International Day of Happiness to recognize the importance of happiness and wellbeing in the lives of people around the world. Last year I attended the launch of the annual UN World Happiness Report in New York. This year the UN is closed to the public,
By Brian Czech
The “circular economy” is a response to the environmental problems and resource shortages that arise as the human economy expands. The focus of the circular economy literature is on efficiency which, in terms of economic production, means more output per unit of input. All else equal, increasing efficiency means higher profits, too. That’s real motivation for the corporation.
Efficiency connects to the human propensity to innovate, too. From childhood on,
COVID-19 has done in a deadly way what steady-state economists would prescribe in a healthy way: putting the brakes on a runaway economy. In fact, the pandemic has slammed on the brakes and jammed the GDP gearstick into reverse. It has ushered us into a recession that will be pronounced and protracted. In a COVID-caused recession, it’s nature at bat, not the Fed.
In these dark times, any source of comfort is welcome.
Capitalism and growth might have similar connotations, but they have important distinctions, too. “Capitalism” has become a clumsy catch-all for any number of value-laden projections—greed, big business, innovation, accumulation, complexity, workaholism. “Growth,” meanwhile, is a landmine of technical and cultural connotations, and I’ll explore just a couple of them here.
Technically speaking, their differences seem straightforward. Growth is a material increase in economic production and consumption. Capitalism is a highly complex term,
In an appeal to Mr. Trudeau’s philosophical musings, I’ve written a letter to him listing five ways Canada can foster a better, more sustainable economy.
“There are a lot of people out there, environmental thinkers like Herman Daly and others, who talk about the fact that maybe endless growth within a finite system is not either possible or even desirable.
Herman Daly discusses the natural alliances between peacemakers and steady staters, and between the growth economy and warfare.
Our economy faces a futility limit, ecological catastrophe limit, and an economic limit. Fortunately, the economic limit will likely be the first we encounter; hopefully we can implement a steady state economy before the others are reached!
GDP growth is creating more problems than it solves–which is exactly why we need to keep calculating and monitoring it.
Does Paul Krugman believe GDP growth is making us richer or poorer?
When viewed through the lens of ecological economics and energy resources, the situation in Ukraine comes into sharp focus.
