Sustain Our Earth

"With the world’s population headed toward 9 billion at mid-century and millions of people climbing out of poverty, global energy demand could increase by as much as 80% by 2050. That’s according to Shell’s latest scenarios, which look at trends in the economy, politics and energy in considering developments over the next half a century."

"So we have no historical precedents for anything greater than 1% per annum reduction in emissions. We’re saying we need nearer 10% per annum, and this is something we need to be doing today. And therefore, we can draw a very clear conclusion from this, that in the short to medium term, the way for the Annex 1, the wealthy parts of the world to meet their obligations to 2°C, is to cut back very significantly on consumption. And that would therefore mean in the short to medium term a reduction in our economic activity i.e. we could not have economic growth."

"We are five years into a severe global food crisis that is very unlikely to go away. It will threaten poor countries with increased malnutrition and starvation and even collapse. Resource squabbles and waves of food-induced migration will threaten global stability and global growth. This threat is badly underestimated by almost everybody and all institutions with the possible exception of some military establishments."

Joe Romm summarises the latest article by guru investor Jeremy Grantham in his Quarterly Newsletter. "The global economy is a Ponzi scheme".

US economic growth will be less than 1% in the next fourty years according to a new analysis by famous American investor Jeremy Grantham. The contrarian investor sees resource scarcity and higher resource prices as well as demographic factors as the main reason why our global economies will continue to struggle for new economic growth.

As always the gloomy predictions of Mr Grantham's piece make a lot of sense but will be neglected by the "don't worry, be happy" myopic political and economic elites.

Another impressive presentation by Richard Heinberg of why we have now entered the post-growth era and what will be the implications for our societies.

Despite this large untapped potential, a sufficient degree of decoupling may not be achieved. As part of a precautionary strategy, policy and society should therefore also reflect on conditions of social and political stability under conditions of low economic growth.

This new report from the German Advisory Council on the Environment is one of the few reports which looks beyond the "decoupling" paradigm and puts forward ideas to adapt economic and social practices and institutions for a coming post-growth world.