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"We can't afford poverty in a world in which there are environmental limits."
#TimJackson, Professor at the University of Surrey, Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018875451/prof-tim-jackson-imagining-life-after-capitalism
Sustainable growth was the focus of the recent World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, but how realistic is this goal, and what would it look like? The idea of degrowth, as a counter to the status quo of aiming for exponential growth, has also been gaining popularity. Last year's IPCC report on mitigating climate change cited it for the first time, and the European Research Council has recently given NZ$15.5 million to degrowth academics to study 'post growth' policies. Professor Tim Jackson is a specialist in sustainable development at the University of Surrey, Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity and on Air New Zealand's Sustainability Advisory Panel. His latest book is Post Growth - Life after Capitalism.
Reversing the Freight Train: The Case for Degrowth
... Walt Rostow, who was, along with Kuznets, one of the field’s most influential early thinkers, understood growth as the foundation of the postwar world order. His Stages of Economic Growth, published in 1960, was unsubtly subtitled ‘A Non-Communist Manifesto’. According to what is now called the ‘Rostovian’ account, growth wasn’t just the solution to domestic instability in advanced industrial economies and the remedy for the backwardness of ‘traditional’ (non-industrial) societies; it was also the antidote to socialism. There was no need for revolution: the managed markets of postwar capitalism would eventually, peacefully, deliver the fruits of modernisation – a non-violent, self-reinforcing alternative to expropriation and collectivisation. It wasn’t clear, however, how traditional societies would respond to the inevitable disruption associated with integration into the global economy. ‘How,’ Rostow asked, ‘should the traditional society react to the intrusion of a more advanced power: with cohesion, promptness and vigour, like the Japanese; by making a virtue of fecklessness, like the oppressed Irish of the 18th century; by slowly and reluctantly altering the traditional society, like the Chinese?’ ...
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train
This reviews three recent books:
Tomorrow’s Economy: A Guide to Creating Healthy Green Growth
by Per Espen Stoknes.
MIT, 360 pp., £15.99, April, 978 0 262 54385 9
Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World
by Jason Hickel.
Windmill, 318 pp., £10.99, February 2021, 978 1 78609 121 5
Post Growth: Life after Capitalism
by Tim Jackson.
Polity, 228 pp., £14.99, March 2021, 978 1 5095 4252 9
The Case for Degrowth
by Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria.
Polity, 140 pp., £9.99, September 2020, 978 1 5095 3563 7
Archive / Paywall: https://archive.ph/2022.08.10-151410/https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train
HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32416815
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n16/geoff-mann/reversing-the-freight-train
#Growth #Degrowth #LimitsToGrowth #SimonKuznets #WaltRostow #PerEspenStoknes #TimJackson #JasonHickel #GiorgosKallis #SusanPaulson #GiacomoDAlisa #FedericoDemaria #Books #BookReview #LRB #LondonReview