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The Forum > Article Comments > Infinite growth in a finite world? > Comments

Infinite growth in a finite world? : Comments

By John Töns, published 15/6/2009

Economic theory seems to be divorced from reality: no one has shown how we can have infinite growth in a finite world.

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What also happened in the 1970s is the the USA's production of oil began to decline forcing them to buy more from the rest of the world and making them vulnerable to the oil embargos of that decade.
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Monday, 15 June 2009 10:00:46 AM
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Well said John. Of course the usual rabble will come out of the woodwork and put their heads on the sand and then regurgitate their nonsense about "She'll be right Jack". Our fearless leader seems to on board the spend, spend, spend train and when the money all runs out and the cost of credit goes up, the other mob will get to run the country again and try to get us out of the usual mess that Labor gets us in. Not that they understand the economic realities of a finite world either. We can only hope that one day the penny will drop.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Monday, 15 June 2009 10:08:52 AM
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Hi Michael,
nice to see you still commenting here. I sometimes need a break! ;-)

I was wondering if this article was going to touch on the "Exponential Money" theories of Douthewaite and Chris Martenson. You know, the FEASTA line that we "have" to grow because we lend money into the system exponentially and so would have exponential inflation unless we had real economic growth to back up the extra money.

A peak oiler / greenie mate of mine, totally into peak oil and global warming, still finds that he doubts this FEASTA line of economic argument. He says it is not the tool that's broken, it is the way it is being used. Keep in mind, he predicted the GFC back in 2005.
http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2005/08/perfect-storm-approaches-america.html

Anyway, I loaded a recent email from Neil on my blog, where he tries to explain to my non-economic mindset why the FEASTA argument could be wrong. Do you have time to take a quick look and comment?

http://eclipsenow.blogspot.com/2009/03/steady-state-money.html

I agree that we need to develop a culture and economic model that can run a "stable state" economy not addicted to growth. I'm just not sure that the money system as it is is broken, or whether it is just silly policies that have got us into this mess.

I of course agree that we DO live on a finite planet and all sorts of "interesting times" lie ahead. (Remembering the Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times".)
Posted by Eclipse Now, Monday, 15 June 2009 10:30:17 AM
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The Ponzi scheme (see the link) idea doesn't really work for me. It is more like cutting down the last tree for a quick profit and then no more trees can grow, or eating the seed grain and then there is no seed for crops next season.

It seems like we can either:
* come up with some really good ideas for new energy sources or try to reduce population growth
* come up with some really good ideas for growing more food on less land, with less water, less fertiliser and worse soil or try to reduce population growth
* come up with some really good ideas to preserve the ecosystems in the oceans and the forests or try to reduce population growth

It seems like reducing population growth helps to solve all those problems, and would be far easier than coming up with the really good ideas.

Unfortuneately, we really have to reduce population growth AND come up with lots of good ideas. We just don't want to. It's a lot more fun to eat the seed grain.
Posted by ericc, Monday, 15 June 2009 10:31:12 AM
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It is good to see a steady stream of articles on OLO addressing the entwined issues of sustainability and continuous growth. This is certainly the most important subject of information dissemination and debate that this forum offers….or that can be offered by any forum.

But one thing that is nearly always left out of these discussions is the differentiation between good and bad growth. We need good growth. We have desperately got to stop bad growth!

Good growth is stuff that leads to genuine progress. It includes better resource-use efficiency, the development of alternative energy sources and methodologies and technological advances that facilitate these things

Bad growth is continuous expansion of resource consumption and continuously increasing economic turnover due to population growth. It is stuff that weakens the demand / supply relationship, while not improving our average quality of life.

We can’t just denounce all growth. We’ve always got to tease these two aspects apart.

Surely we can do this before we reach the point of social and economic implosion. Surely governments and the business community that hold so much sway over them can appreciate this distinction and work solidly towards refining our growth to the good growth fraction!

Paul Gilding is very positive about our ability to do this….although not all that positive about the sort of sting that we’ll need to prompt us into action: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/stories/2009/2592909.htm
Posted by Ludwig, Monday, 15 June 2009 10:31:47 AM
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I came back to the land of the big PX from Apocalypse Vietnam 40 years ago. My salary has been about the same as the average family income my entire life, reasonably, but not highly well paid for the US, but fabulously for most of the world.

I wonder if I will live to see Apocalypse USA.

I wonder if I want to.

If Israel decides to kill all the Jews in Iran, the Apocalypse will follow shortly.
Posted by 124c4u, Monday, 15 June 2009 11:27:41 AM
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