Reddit reviews Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet

Du henviser i dit indlæg til begrebet grøn vækst ti gange, på trods af at Dragsted slet ikke nævner det. Han forsøger netop at gøre op med ideen om vækst som et mål i sig selv, f.eks. ved at foreslå, at højere produktivitet fører til nedsat arbejdstid frem for lønstigninger.

Idéen om, at vi kan have fortsat økonomisk vækst mens vi reducerer vores belastning på miljøet, forekommer mere og mere utopisk. Tim Jackson skrev en udmærket bog med udgangspunkt i debatten om relativ vs. absolut decoupling for snart ti år siden, og senest har tyske forskere endnu engang afvist hypotesen om grøn vækst gennem forskellige modelfremskrivninger

Edit: Fandt en god forklaring på relativ vs. absolut afkobling på videnskab.dk:

• ’Relativ afkobling’ er mulig, fordi BNP ofte vokser relativt mere end miljøproblemer - pga. øget effektivitet.
  
  
• Det giver dog ikke anledning til ’absolut afkobling’, hvor miljøproblemerne falder, mens BNP stiger.
  
  
• Det skyldes ’Rebound-effekten’: øget effektivitet giver ofte øget forbrug. En bil, der kan køre længere pr. liter kører man ofte mere i, fordi det er billigere.

This is worth a read...

I'm an environmental sociologist, but I focus mostly on macro-level issues so the following suggestions are somewhat biased in that way. For sustainable consumption research, you should check out the work of Andrew Szasz, he does very interesting work. There is also Juliet Schor, Gill Seyfang, and Tim Jackson. There's also a huge literature on environmental concern/environmental behaviors that has paid considerable attention to the role of social class/income. For a start, see the work of Jenniver Givens (Univ. of Utah), Sandra Marquart-Pyatt (Mich. State Univ.), and Riley Dunlap (Oklahoma St. Univ.).

>I said to incentive greed. You want to save money? Well the cheapest way is to respect the environment. Want to avoid taxes? Put work in on social issues. Your company fucked up in the past? Lesser sentences if you do better right now.

Since none of these are currently true, we would have to lay a hell of lot of unpopular political groundwork (and dealing with the flight of business as a result) to make them true. Currently, every business has plenty of incentive is to bend the rules, avoid the consequences, hide the money offshore, basically take the money and run. Shortsightedness is the order of the day, and "cash flow is king" as they say.

>Market growth is a healthy thing...

You are correct about this - the reason we get into a disagreement on this is that we don't measure growth in that linear way. We are in a system that is making all their financial bets based on percentage growth (which could be expressed as having the ability to repay a loan with interest), and expecting returns as such before giving money out to business loans or aspiring homeowners, before buying stock. Percentage-based growth is exponential growth and that cannot go on forever. I believe that living in a system of debt-based money and interest is what prevents any real change from happening as long as we continue playing within the rules of fractional-reserve banking and our entire monetary policy based on lending.

This economist has said what I believe needs to be said, and thought about. There are ways for us to approach prosperity without the economic pressure that comes from racing to keep GDP growing at ~3% annually.