We Need To Lose Our Fixation on Economic Growth

I was watching a newscast recently in which the commentator was bemoaning the slow growth in the economy. That started me thinking about exponentials and limits to growth. It's pretty clear that mainstream economists and the politicians in thrall to them have no conception of what awaits us if economic growth continues over the long term. Coincidentally, I've come across several articles in the last few days on that exact subject. 

• From Nature: Degrowth can work — here’s how science can help. "Wealthy countries can create prosperity while using less materials and energy if they abandon economic growth as an objective.
  
  Researchers in ecological economics call for a different approach — degrowth3. Wealthy economies should abandon growth of gross domestic product (GDP) as a goal, scale down destructive and unnecessary forms of production to reduce energy and material use, and focus economic activity around securing human needs and well-being. This approach, which has gained traction in recent years, can enable rapid decarbonization and stop ecological breakdown while improving social outcomes2. It frees up energy and materials for low- and middle-income countries in which growth might still be needed for development. Degrowth is a purposeful strategy to stabilize economies and achieve social and ecological goals, unlike recession, which is chaotic and socially destabilizing and occurs when growth-dependent economies fail to grow."
  
  
• From Phys.org: Evolution might stop humans from solving climate change, researchers say. "Central features of human evolution may stop our species from resolving global environmental problems like climate change, says a recent study led by the University of Maine.
  
  The study explored how human societies' use of the environment changed over our evolutionary history. The research team investigated changes in the ecological niche of human populations, including factors such as the natural resources they used, how intensively they were used, what systems and methods emerged to use those resources and the environmental impacts that resulted from their usage.
  
  
  This effort revealed a set of common patterns. Over the last 100,000 years, human groups have progressively used more types of resources, with more intensity, at greater scales and with greater environmental impacts. Those groups often then spread to new environments with new resources."
  
  
• And finally, this rather depressing article from Nature, not directly connected to growth, except that more growth means more climate instability: Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers.
  
  "A major concern for the world’s ecosystems is the possibility of collapse, where landscapes and the societies they support change abruptly. Accelerating stress levels, increasing frequencies of extreme events and strengthening intersystem connections suggest that conventional modelling approaches based on incremental changes in a single stress may provide poor estimates of the impact of climate and human activities on ecosystems. We conduct experiments on four models that simulate abrupt changes in the Chilika lagoon fishery, the Easter Island community, forest dieback and lake water quality—representing ecosystems with a range of anthropogenic interactions. Collapses occur sooner under increasing levels of primary stress but additional stresses and/or the inclusion of noise in all four models bring the collapses substantially closer to today by ~38–81%. We discuss the implications for further research and the need for humanity to be vigilant for signs that ecosystems are degrading even more rapidly than previously thought."