TH Sacrifices economic growth for the good of environment

Context
Article #1: Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
Global economic growth - in its current form - cannot continue if nations are serious about curbing
climate change, says Andrew Simms. In this week's Green Room, he warns that the consumer society
cannot "have its planet and eat it".
From birth until it reaches sexual maturity at about six weeks, a hamster doubles its weight each week.
If, instead of levelling-off in maturity, it carried on growing - continuing to double its weight each week -
we would be facing a nine-billion-tonne hamster on its first birthday.
If it kept eating at the same ratio of food to bodyweight, the hamster's daily intake would be greater than the
total, annual amount of maize produced worldwide.
In nature, there is a reason why things do not grow indefinitely.
Yet the entire canon of mainstream contemporary economics seems to believe that economics exists
independent of the laws of biology, chemistry and physics.
It assumes, without exception, that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is both desirable and possible.

'Limits to growth'
To suggest that growth might ultimately be bounded by physical constraints, of course, is not new on the
very margins of economics or in other disciplines.

For example, a group of researchers in 1972 used an early computer model to compare available natural
resources with rates of human consumption. Their "world model" was published as the famous Limits to
Growth report.
Back then, much less data and processing power were available. As a result, for some it acted as a wake-up
call, but many others mocked it and used the report to brand the wider environmental movement as alarmist.
In 2008, a physicist called Graham Turner decided to look again at the controversial report. He compared its
original projections with 30 years' worth of subsequent observed trends.
Amazingly, given the available technology and data, he concluded that they "compared favourably". The
authors of Limits to Growth had been broadly right all along.
We shouldn't be surprised. At what point, and on what basis, did consumer society ever truly believe that it
could have its planet and eat it?
Jared Diamond's book Collapse tells the history of societies throughout history that fell by overshooting their
environmental life support systems.
He charts how wealth too often comes at the expense of liquidating natural capital and how, in environmental
terms, "an impressive-looking bank account may conceal a negative cash flow".
Now, standing in the shadow of the banking crisis, we have less excuse than usual to blissfully ignore how
our impressive looking growth economies hide a negative ecological cash flow.
Take just one example. A new report from our team at Nef (the New Economics Foundation) looks in detail
at the relationship between economic growth and the need to avert runaway climate change.
Based on the leading models for climate change and the global economy's use of fossil fuels, the report -
called Growth Isn't Possible - comes to a seemingly inescapable and self-explanatory conclusion.
It asks whether global economic growth can be maintained, while keeping a good likelihood of limiting
global temperature rise to 2C (3.6F) - the agreed political objective of the European Union, and widely
considered the maximum rise to which humanity can adapt without serious difficulty.

'Ecological bankruptcy'
Some nations, of course, face difficulty at much lower rises, such as small island states.
None of the models studied, including the most optimistic variations of low-carbon energy and efficiency,
could square the circle of endless global economic growth with climate safety.

Over the last decade, carbon intensity has not gone down, it has generally flat-lined and, in some years, even
gone up.

Professor Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at Manchester University,
UK, concluded in another study that: "Economic growth in [industrialised nations] cannot be reconciled with
a 2, 3 or even 4C characterisation of dangerous climate change."
There is also a growing appreciation that it has not all to do with climate change.
The latest set of accounts for humanity's ecological footprint reveal that, conservatively, it takes the Earth
nearly 18 months to produce the ecological services that humanity uses in one year.
The negative cash flow is getting worse.
In a unique study, published in the science journal Nature in September 2009, a group of 29 leading
international scientists identified nine processes in the biosphere for which they considered it necessary to
"define planetary boundaries".
Of the nine, three boundaries had already been transgressed: climate change, interference in the nitrogen
cycle, and biodiversity loss.
Assuming that humanity does not deliberately wish to destroy its own foundations, and with so much science
and sophisticated monitoring available, why is this happening?
For all the promise of magic bullet technologies, continual growth drowns out energy and natural resource
efficiency gains.
Even efficiency gains themselves do not necessarily reduce consumption. Counter-intuitively, greater energy
efficiency tends to reduce costs and drive up overall consumption.
There is a growing awareness too that, at least where rich countries are concerned, the downside of growth
comes with very little or no upside.
For most of these nations, the link between rising GDP and higher life satisfaction broke down decades ago.
Lord Adair Turner, chairman of both the UK Financial Services Authority and the UK Climate Change
Committee, recently described the pursuit of endless rich country growth a "false god".
Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said GDP growth
was "proving to be an extremely harmful way of measuring economic progress".
The reason is that in economic commentary, growth is always assumed to be good. But you can also have
"uneconomic growth", when it is jobless, socially divisive or environmentally destructive. A parallel in
nature might be growth like that in cancer.
Burden of proof
Are alternative measures of success available? Yes, many. But politicians and the business press remain
uncritically spellbound by the equation "all GDP growth is good".
Here is an irony: the hard science of climate change is subjected continually to the most extraordinary degree
of critical scrutiny in the media.
Given their actual number, informed sceptics are given disproportionate airtime and column inches.
But where the "dismal science" of economics is concerned, the daily reporting of its central tenet - growth
is good - passes unchallenged.
The much vaunted journalistic balance is abandoned. Why? Perhaps it is because this type of economics is
not science at all, but doctrine. To question doctrine makes you a heretic, and heretics get excommunicated.
The time has come to question. Now, the burden of proof lies on those who promise endless growth to
demonstrate how it will be possible.
In the meantime, the pressing task for everyone else is to work out how all of us on the planet can have good
lives while living within its means.

Andrew Simms is policy director of the New Economics Foundation (Nef) and co-author with Dr Victoria
Johnson of Growth Isn't Possible: Why We Need a New Economic Direction, published by Nef and Schumacher
College

Article #2 Decline of England's natural environment 'hits economy'

England's natural environment is in decline and its deterioration is harming the economy, an
independent advisory group has told the government.
The Natural Capital Committee says pressures will rise with population growth and has
called for a 25-year investment plan.
Its report said measures like investing in improved air quality and greener cities would bring
economic benefits.
Defra said it had set "long-term goals" to halt "decades of decline".
The report said air pollution reduces productivity and also causes some 40,000 premature
deaths each year. It also called for investment in urban green areas to improve physical and
mental health for those living in cities.
The report calculates that health costs can be reduced by cleaning up dirty air; floods can be
tempered by creating new wetlands; and better green spaces in cities can tempt people
outdoors to improve their physical and mental well-being.
The NCC puts numbers on the benefits of environmental investment. It says planting woods
near cities of up to 250,000 additional hectares can generate a benefit to society of £500m per
annum as people exercise and enjoy nature.
It says restoration of around 140,000 hectares of upland peat bogs would deliver net benefits
of £570m over 40 years in storing carbon.
Restoring commercial fish stocks, particularly white fish like cod and shellfish, would cause
short-term problems for the industry, but bring long-term gains for generations to come, the
report maintains. The cost of restoring some stocks of shellfish could be outweighed 6:1 by
the benefits, it says.
A Defra spokeswoman said: "We have set long-term goals to stop the decades of decline in
wildlife and habitats and have already seen some improvements.
"Since 2010 we have helped to create over 150,000 acres of field margins, wetlands and
woodlands, and woodland cover is at its highest level in 700 years.
"Economic growth and improving the environment go hand in hand."
She said the department would analyse recommendations made by the committee and
respond later this year.
By Roger Harrabin, BBC environment analyst, 27 January 2015
Article #3: Why Economic Growth is Good for the Environment
In the March 2004 issue of Scientific American, National Aeronautics and Space
Administration global-warming expert James Hansen notes that greenhouse gas emissions and
global-warming projections are “consistently pessimistic.” Hansen suggests that projections do
not take into account the lower carbon dioxide and methane emissions that have resulted from
technological advancements. He explains that the lower carbon dioxide emissions result from
increased energy efficiency following the energy crisis in the 1970s and the lower methane
emissions, from technological changes in agriculture.

Hansen’s essay concludes on an optimistic note, saying “the main elements [new technologies]
required to halt climate change have come into being with remarkable rapidity.” This statement
would not have surprised economist Julian Simon. He saw the “ultimate resource” to be the
human mind and believed it to be best motivated by market forces.

Because of a combination of market forces and technological innovations, we are not running
out of natural resources. As a resource becomes more scarce, prices increase, thus encouraging
development of cheaper alternatives and technological innovations. Just as fossil fuel replaced
scarce whale oil, its use will be reduced by new technology and alternative fuel sources.

Market forces also cause economic growth, which in turn leads to environmental improvements.
Put simply, poor people are willing to sacrifice clean water and air, healthy forests, and wildlife
habitat for economic growth. But as their incomes rise above subsistence, “economic growth
helps to undo the damage done in earlier years,” says economist Bruce Yandle. “If economic
growth is good for the environment, policies that stimulate growth ought to be good for the
environment.”

The link between greenhouse gas emissions and economic prosperity is no different. Using
data from the United States, Professor Robert McCormick finds that “higher GDP reduces total
net [greenhouse gas] emissions.”

He goes a step further by performing the complex task of estimating net U.S. carbon emissions.
This requires subtracting carbon sequestration (long-term storage of carbon in soil and water)
from carbon emissions. Think of it this way: When you build a house, the wood in it stores
carbon. In a poor country that wood would have been burned to cook supper or to provide heat,
thus releasing carbon into the atmosphere. McCormick shows that economic growth in the
United States has increased carbon sequestration in many ways, including improved methods
of storing waste, increased forest coverage, and greater agricultural productivity that reduces
the acreage of cultivated land.

Because rich economies sequester more carbon than poor ones, stored carbon must be
subtracted from emissions to determine an economy’s net addition to greenhouse gas emissions.
McCormick’s data show that “rich countries take more carbon out of the air than poorer ones”
and that “the growth rate of net carbon emission per person will soon be negative in the United
States.” Put differently—richer may well be cooler.

Global-warming policy analysts agree that greenhouse gas regulations such as those proposed
at Kyoto would have negative impacts on the economy. Therefore, as McCormick warns, we
should take great care that regulations in the name of global warming “not kill the goose that
lays the golden eggs.”

New from the Hoover Press is You Have to Admit It’s

Getting Better: From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality, edited by Terry L.
Anderson.

Gov Response
Set Up/ Characterization:
 Whether or not the state should prioritise
environment than economic growth
 Developing countries
Why?

 BOP
We aren’t keeping balance between
economic growth and environment
advancement
 Where to draw the line?
"Limit the economy"

The world is deteriorating Humans do not cause harm to the

environmentally
 People wanted to become richer or a
greedy country wanted to advance
economically.
 We aren't keeping a balance of both, and
this is why we need to ration both
economy and environment.
 We may even have to "limit the
economy".
Economy relies on the environment
 Economy depends on the state of our
environment
 Natural Resources : such as wood for
paper, water for the generation of
hydroelectricity and so on.
environment on a large scale.
 It is politically correct to say we should
protect the environment but if we give up
economic growth then America can't
help out poor countries as much.
Economy is needed as the basis modal for
environment protection
 You need money for technology
advancement so that you can protect the
environment
 If we keep advancing our economy We are not running out of natural
without replenishing our resources then resources
both the systems will fail.  As a resource becomes more scarce,
 Protecting the environment would prices increase, thus encouraging
increase economic growth. development of cheaper alternatives and
technological innovations.
 Just as fossil fuel replaced scarce whale
oil, its use will be reduced by new
technology and alternative fuel sources
Economic growth will suffer if There are still other fields for economy to
environment is not taken care of grow
 We will have to spend billions and
billions of dollars and therefore the
economic growth will suffer.
 If we wait for problems to come, we will
experience drought lands, floods,
epidemics.
 All of these things are going to ask for a
lot of resources from our governments
and these resources won't be used to
stimulate economic growth.

Opp Response
Set Up/ Characterization:  Developing counties can develop eco-
 Whether or not the state should choose tourism as source of economy
to develop (economic growth)  National forest reserve is barely not
 Developing countries enough
Why?
- Economically still unstable
 National forest reserve
- Protect unique floras and faunas
(symbolise)