Re:Green recovery must end the reign of GDP, argue Cambridge...
by SpicyLemonZest on Monday December 14, 2020 @11:28AM
(#25419409)
I don't know. There was a certain Thomas Malthus who was quite convinced that the standard of living in the 1800s was the highest nature would permit, and any country which wanted to avoid famine would need to virtuously restrain itself from seeking to consume more. Maybe it's different this time, and we really are at the limits of what nature will support, but I think we need some explanation of how we know we're not repeating his lack of imagination.
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Re:Green recovery must end the reign of GDP, argue Cambridge...
by elproxy on Monday December 14, 2020 @03:26PM
(#25422805)
That's a misread of Malthus: https://twitter.com/g_kallis/status/1285950145553731584?s=20
And in the meantime the state of science has evolved a bit. We have a better idea today where we stand on planetary boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
Re:Green recovery must end the reign of GDP, argue Cambridge...
by SpicyLemonZest on Monday December 14, 2020 @05:03PM
(#25424007)
This Twitter thread is an overcorrection. I've seen people characterize Malthus's position as "Famine is an inevitable part of the natural order of things" or "The current global population is the maximum we can possibly support", and neither of those are true. But he definitely didn't believe that "there are no limits to resources or food production". He claimed that it was absolutely impossible to improve agricultural productivity more than linearly (https://books.google.com/books?id=9-q_SSfE6skC&pg=PA5#v=onep..., p.10), and questioned whether densely settled countries like Japan and China could ever achieve even twice their current productivity (p. 8).