> I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'

> This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.

No, that was not clear to me. Especially not as you replied to someone else and confirmed that yes, degrowth means preventing improvement of quality of life across all economic strata. But let's not make this a "I-said-you-said" argument. Fair enough. We all seem to agree that degrowth doesn't necessarily imply degrowth across all economic strata.

Either way, note that nowhere did I even propose a "degrowth" strategy. I was merely saying that going on defense and conjuring all kinds of emotional arguments for why you personally can't dispense with your huge gasoline truck for reasons that are really quite trivial in the grander scheme of things, is very immature and selfish. Also very short-sighted, even from a selfish perspective. Nowhere did I suggest that you can't at least shift consumption from CO2E-heavy goods to less CO2E-heavy goods. That would in theory not require any degrowth whatsoever, merely a shift to more sustainable consumption even if the level of total economic consumption stays the same.

> This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.

Again, I don't share your narrow view of sustainability as equivalent to "resource extraction". Clearly, if the model induces external costs that threaten to end civilization as we know it and the economic models or at the very least radically decrease quality of life and incur huge economic and human costs in the foreseeable future, it is not sustainable. Sustainability, by the definition I know, means that you can keep the system or behavior unchanged. It doesn't matter if we have the potential to keep extracting fossil fuels in the current rate for millennia, if a side effect is a civilization-ending environmental catastrophe. The amount of resources is irrelevant. Unless you factor in "livable climate and environment" as valuable resource, it doesn't work.

> The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.

That model has obvious flaws and has been criticized by many. For one, the available data is lacking and hand-picked. Secondly, there have been many instances where GDP has risen alongside with poverty, if measured on a national level. See India for example.

> The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.

Really, there's no prediction that suggests that the current trajectory of emissions is catastrophic? Well, if you're gonna dismiss all climate models or predictions, then this whole discussion is irrelevant and I have nothing more to say.

> lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.

> The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.

> Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.

You are way too technology-centered. It doesn't matter if there are technological solutions on a lab table somewhere. You have to factor in rates of adoption, political incentive, scale, regulations, economics, etc etc. Given that, there's absolutely no indications that we are anywhere near on track for deploying technological solutions on a time-scale that is relevant. I'd love to see your data if you think otherwise.

> Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.

Of course total emissions of a specific nation doesn't matter most. Total global emissions matter. It doesn't matter for the climate if people are spread out - it only matters for the local environment which is a different issue. And from a fairness perspective, of course you need to look at per capita. Why should you or I be entitled to a lifestyle that we acknowledge would not be anywhere near feasible if adopted by everyone?

user:	wishpishh
created:	October 13, 2012
karma:	53
about:	http://blog.hannesjohansson.se

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