2394. Taking on growth and de-growth. Is there a third way?
Growth is treated by many economists as essential - without growth we cannot feed and employ multitudes.
But the problem is that growth conflicts with need to defeat global warming. There are critical assumptions built in to this logic. The race to feed is between local gardens and megamachine industrial farming. Immediately we see that both can be "growth" but with very different approaches and consequences.
Growth had meant pulling wealth out of nature and out of society plants for food, skills harvested from population to aid corporations grow profit.
Aristotle wrote that we can have growth without development and we can have development without growth. His logic should kick-start our imagination. Can we have growth that is not extractive? Rearranging what we have can lead to more sophisticated use. I think this is enough to suggest that the debate between growth and degrowth is too limiting and the real hope lies in breaking the logic and seeing new possibilities for how we have humans on the earth. Economics meant estate management for the Greeks of Plato's time. Now it should still mean estate management, but the estate is the earth and its management the integration of humans and earth.
Do we have the courage to take on growth?
Is economics key to coping with climate change? Seems to me dangerous because the economy is owned by few. In a discussion tis morning about Venezuela we see that the welfare of the population depends on the withdrawal of US les sanctions, but that means selling oil which, from a climate view, should remain in the ground. Venezuela is a lading example of ho we are trpped between irreconcilable paths.