There is no bigger misunderstanding or deliberate misuse than that of the word; ‘growth’.

The use of ‘growth’ by politicians, economists, business people, media, etc, as being of unquestionable necessity to the maintenance of a healthy economy and society is appalling and extremely damaging to our future.

The concept of sustainability has pretty much taken hold. And anyone with more than three active brain cells who stops and thinks about how this sits with ever-continuing growth, realises the huge conflict.

And yet the worship of growth remains entrenched.

We never hear of the separation of good growth and bad growth. Good growth being technological developments that improve productivity and energy efficiency and divert us away from non-renewable energy use and onto a renewable energy platform, and which reduce pollution and other environmental impacts, etc. Bad growth being human expansion in terms of ever-more people and ever-more humanised landscapes and pressure on non renewable and potentially renewable resources, and increasing per-capita consumption.

The latter sits fairly and squarely hidden away within the umbrella of growth, as espoused by our illustrious governments at all levels. By and large, the general community remains completely duped by this; believing that, although their inner commonsense tells them otherwise, this expansionist aspect of growth is necessary and is somehow not damaging to our future wellbeing.

Anyone who gives half a hoot about the environment, sustainability and all that stuff, can see the absurdity in the Queensland Government’s (and numerous other governments) espousal of sustainable economic growth.

So it's high time that the whole community cottoned onto the enormous sophistry or blatant and deliberate misuse of language centred on that word ‘growth’

The concept of sustainabililty is so flawed on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin.

I will tell you why I think so, but first can I ask you to set out the basic claim. It’s something like this, right?

‘We are not only growing in population, but the standard of living is also growing. It is self-evident logic that you can’t have infinite growth on a finite base. This makes for a use of resources that is not sustainable. If we keep it up, we’ll run out of resources. We have already reached the peak of availability of fuel energy. We’ll pollute the planet, degrade our common resources, and extinguish other species. We will rob future generations of the right to live as we have lived. We need to manage our resources sustainably – a steady state in which we preserve ecological diversity, provide decently and equitably for all human beings, and at the same time leave enough for future generations to live as well as we. The world is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.’

Is that about it? Do I have it aright? Anything you want to add to the argument that I have missed

Diocletian, I don’t know about this;

“The world is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

I reckon we’ve probably exceeded the human population whereby the world can support even a half-decent quality of life for us all in an ongoing manner.

But otherwise what you’ve outlined sounds pretty right. So please, do tell why you think that the idea of sustainability hardly qualifies as rational discourse.

I like the suggestion earlier in this thread that we need to distinguish between good growth and bad growth. I am a beginner at the most elementary level of understanding economics so excuse my naivety. Growth, such as "the economy grew at 3% last year" means that the various proxies used to measure growth indicated that there were 3% more money-type transactions than the year before. It could mean that there was 3% more production of goods and services, or it could mean that of the goods and services typical of an economy 3% more were formalised through the exchange of money. If I cut my lawn, and my neighbour cuts his lawn, all is well. If I cut his lawn and he pays me, and then I used that money to pay him to cut my lawn, then the economy would have "grown" by those amounts - but no real change in production has occured. I wonder how much of modern economic growth could be some kind of artefact of the progression in the commercialisation of activities rather than actual increase in productivity. There could also be a lot of good growth that has little resources downside: such as a lot more musical instrument playing, delight in learning, historical research, psychotherapy, and cognitive science - to touch base with the article that started this thread.

good comment fencepost>>wonder how much of modern economic growth could be some kind of artefact of the progression in the commercialisation of activities rather than actual increase in productivity.<<

earlier you mentioned 3%'growth',that growth is based on inflation[inflation is the measure of how much our monetay supply got inflated by[or how much our money got stolen through the tax[non tax]called inflation[inflation now only means how much more you need to pay for the same thing]

see that one pound'sterling[promising to pay'bearer'in TRUE silver coin[became fiat currency and nickle coin][but going by the price IN SILVER,your house is still worth the same[in sterling silver]its just in this fiat paper,the supply of paper has yet again]been increased

govt thinks it is too clever[by removing factors that cause the theft[sorry inflation;tax]to be revealed[thus underlying inflation [true inflation[runs about 8 percent]the real[true]theft is much bigger than we know

[govt gave the right to issue'paper'to the worlds bankers[who run the federal reserve's of the world,they actually swap'paper'between each other to manipulate'exchange'rates

[but THEY CONTROL it[unaudited]forEVER,they'issue'it at whim to creditise their mates to steal the real economy[real assets]while we pay intrest on paper[only they control]

its their job to see a lot of good growth potential has little resources[and worthless'securities get underwritten by our super[and our income tax

[income tax didnt egsist till the banks stole the fed,because govts spent it all on making war[cause wars make money]THUS a'big'war is planned to'help'us out of this banker induced collapse as well

[see while our lending creates the money[BUT no one creates the money to repay the intrest[thus this boom and bust]till the next war[this bust is so big they really need a world war[thus the stuff we saw recently in georgia and india[and possably a reason for this latest incursion on the palisteins[to get the arabs[next wednesday]to do something to excuse ww3

jesus upset the'money-changers'[and now we by their'own'deeds all know why]URSURY is the tool of satan's minions[the banking/war buisness cartel]ps wages from mowing lawns is wage[not income]

but govt gets so much'income'from'fools'paying tax on'wages';no one got the inclination[nor]heart to tell the working'serfs'their wages are constuitutionally tax-free

I believe that as soon as the reasoning behind sustainability is examined, it crumbles.

The original hypothesis is that we face a problem that cannot be solved by consensual means. If it could, there would be no issue. We could just abolish all environmental policies, and leave it to society’s mechanism for consensual decision-making about the use of resources: the market.

But that is explicitly what the advocates of sustainability don’t want. The idea is that we need government to 'tackle' the problem.

Since private property and individual freedom are not to be the basis of decisions about resources, there are two possibilities. Either government can have total control over all decisions that affect the environment, and therefore all economic decisions. Or government can have partial control, leaving some fields to the operation of liberty.

If government has total control, it will necessarily abolish economic calculation, which depends on prices, which depend on markets, which depend on private property. Abolishing economic calculation will abolish the ability to compare the inputs of action with the outputs. This will abolish the means of knowing whether we are using more natural resources than less compared to the outcome of a given action. The result must necessarily be environmental destruction and destruction of human life on a vast scale. This result in theory is what happened last time such total control was tried in practice.

But if government has only partial control, the part of human action that is uncontrolled by the Grand Plan will keep mucking it up – that’s the original problem, remember? Ex hypothesi it must be assumed that the continuing problem is the existence of private property and human freedom. Each intervention must fail and that failure will be the pretext for more extensive and intensive government interventions, which in turn must fail for the same reasons. Thus the situation must approach closer and closer to totalitarian control, which not only can’t succeed in practice, it is impossible even in theory.

At best, the attempt must be self-defeating, and far far more anti-social and environmentally destructive than the original problem.