George Monbiot: "The Dangers of Continued Growth Now Demand a New Economic System. ASAP."

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/George-Monbiot--The-Dang-by-Richard-Clark-Consumption_Economic-Collapse_Economic-Crisis_George-Monbiot-140529-645.html

George Monbiot: "The Dangers of Continued Growth Now Demand a New Economic System. ASAP."
By Richard Clark
OpEdNews Op Eds 5/29/2014 at 20:46:18

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled just one cubic meter. Let us then propose that these possessions grew in amount by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.

~snip~

And once you've accepted that fact, it should not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical conclusion that in that particular kind of 'salvation' (i.e. continued economic growth, at 4.5% a year ), lies inevitable economic and societal collapse.

Therefore, to 'succeed' in this way is to destroy ourselves. And yet to fail at the tasks we've perversely set out for ourselves, is also to destroy ourselves, if only in a different way. (If we don't maintain a certain amount of production (of whatever), we can't create nearly enough jobs to keep sufficient numbers of people employed -- at least not the way the economy is currently arranged. Translation: Computers and automation are doing ever more of the work, so unless we reduce the length of the work day, work week, and/or work year, ever more people are going to fall into long term unemployment and poverty. The only alternative to this is steadily ramped-up consumption, and this, as we've shown, cannot end well!)

So this is the societal and economic bind we have inadvertently created. Ignore, if you will, climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; for even if all these problems were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuance of this maximized growth system of ours impossible to sustain. The hyperconsumption, hyperproduction treadmill is in reality a death machine that, while it creates fabulous wealth for some, and considerable wealth for those who succeed in the increasingly difficult, mad scramble for a good education and a decent job, it keeps millions of the less-fortunate poor and sick, many (worldwide) without clean water and enough food. Only with continued warfare and periodic destruction of enormous amounts of wealth (and people), can we sustain this perversely sick system. But that way too will eventually destroy us.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. We can't even have a real war anymore.

Not a WWII scale war. Nukes make that impossible. So there isn't going to be an orgy of destruction to reset things.

Instead we are just going to plunge off the resource and climate cliffs. The future doesn't look good.

[Ghost Dog]

2. This is so. n/t

[roamer65]

3. Man has yet to invent a weapon that he hasn't used to its full potential.

I hate to say it, but we'll eventually use the nukes too.