The problem of economic growth

In response to Andrew Simms' criticism, in today's Guardian of unsustainable economic growth: Growth is good … isn't it?

 

Collectively, we have been struggling both to and not to face up to the absurdity of perpetual economic growth for many years. So what's the problem? Why is it so difficult - apparently, impossible - to face up to?

 

It is because of the following dilemma: the SYSTEM, on which we all depend in 1001 ways, itself depends on perpetual economic growth. Only fundamental and radical change to the SYSTEM can change this, but our brains subconsciously prevent us from contemplating such radical change, partly because it doesn't know where to begin, but mainly because it doesn't want to undermine the conditions on which it's owner's survival or advantage seems to depend.

 

For any one who's interested, I can tell them where they need to begin: by taking a human-evolutionary, i.e. Darwinian, view of human nature and the civilisation (especially the power structures of state and economy) it has given rise to over the centuries (more on this and my other blogs).

The underlying cause of the Sustainability Problem is not economic growth so much as what is driving it

LINK to Guardian article, "This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity", by George Monbiot from the Copenhagen Climate Conference. 

Even if we manage to prevent climate breakdown, [economic] growth means that it's only a matter of time before we hit a new constraint, which demands a new global response: oil, water, phosphate, soil. We will lurch from crisis to existential crisis unless we address the underlying cause: perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet.

What George Monbiot says about economic growth is quite true, but he overlooks what is driving it. Yet, until we recognise and develop an understanding of this, we are powerless to do anything about it.

What's driving economic growth is man's Darwinian nature, which the existing socioeconomic order developed over centuries to simultaneously serve and exploit in a misplaced and perverted continuation of his primordial struggle for survival, advantage and "success" (largely reduced to the individual pursuit and exercise of POWER, i.e. money, social and professional status, the moral high ground, etc.) in the artificial environment of human civilisation itself.