Are There Limits to Growth? Climate Change… Coronavirus… Is There a Connection?

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Tanimura
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Limits To Growth

scholarly journals Over the horizon: Exploring the conditions of a post-growth world

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 117-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Crownshaw ◽  
Caitlin Morgan ◽  
Alison Adams ◽  
Martin Sers ◽  
Natália Britto dos Santos ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Growth Conditions ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Steady Growth ◽  
Economic Paradigm

Maintaining steady growth remains the central goal of economic policy in most nations. However, as evidenced by the advent of the Anthropocene, the global economy has expanded to a point where limits to growth are appearing. Facing the end of growth requires a careful re-examination of plausible future conditions. We draw on a diverse literature to present an interdisciplinary exploration of post-growth conditions in the areas of climate change, ecological impacts, governance, and education, finding that such conditions may invalidate many prevalent assumptions regarding the future. The post-growth world, while subject to significant uncertainty and heterogeneity, will be characterized by profound hazards and discontinuities for both human and natural systems. Furthermore, we argue that an economic paradigm change will be predicated on an involuntary and unplanned cessation of growth. This implies a necessary strategic expansion of the heterodox economic discourse to formulate appropriate responses in view of likely post-growth realities.

Are There Limits to Limits?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dobson
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Global South ◽  
Peak Oil ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Ecological Problems ◽  
The Rich

The idea that there might be “limits to growth” is a key and contested feature of environmental politics. This chapter outlines the limits to growth thesis, describes and assesses critical reactions to it, and comments upon its relevance today. It argues that, after an initial highpoint in the early 1970s, the thesis declined in importance during the 1980s and 1990s under criticism from “ecological modernizers” and from environmental justice advocates in the global South who saw it as way of diverting blame for ecological problems from the rich and powerful to the poor and dispossessed. “Peak oil” and climate change have, though, given renewed impetus to the idea, and this has given rise to new discourses and practices around “sustainable prosperity” and “degrowth.”

Climate change

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 308-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Mahony
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Planetary Scale ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
Ecological Responsibility ◽  
Industrial Civilization

Reference to responsibility is prominent in discussions of climate change of every kind. Certain dimensions of the issue call it forth. These include, above all, the planetary scale of the problem and the corresponding sense of endangerment, along with lack of clarity on what exactly needs to be done and who should do it. The question of planetary responsibility has been around for some time. The limits to growth debate of more than 40 years ago already indicated concern about the ecological limits of industrial civilization ( Meadows et al., 1972 ; Meadows et al., 2004 ). In this light, the article reviews and takes inspiration from key philosophical conceptualizations of global ecological responsibility before it goes on to add a necessary sociological approach that reveals the democratic, communicative mechanisms that might make it realizable.

scholarly journals System Archetypes to Understand the Impacts of Climate Change on Rice Production: A Case Study in West Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhamad Bahri
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Rice Production ◽  
Climate Projections ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Simple Tool ◽  
Change Impact ◽  
System Archetypes ◽  
High Minimum Temperature ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

Climate projections show that southern Indonesia such as West Nusa Tenggara is projected to experience a lower precipitation and higher temperatures. To date, research on climate change impact on Indonesian rice production yield is limited. As climate change is projected to decrease rainfall and to increase temperatures, this paper offers a qualitative analysis using system archetypes to understand the impacts of climate change on rice production. Two system archetypes are identified including Limits to Growth and Success to Successful. Both archetypes explain that rice production is hampered by high minimum temperature as photosynthesis output is decreased by increasing respiration. This paper shows that using a simple tool, system archetypes, we can describe the impacts of climate change on rice production. The outputs of this study such as a causal loop diagram and system archetypes can be a basis to develop a simulation model in understanding the impacts of climate change on main crops.

2. Looming Tragedy

2021 ◽  
pp. 27-52
Author(s):  
John S. Dryzek
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carrying Capacity ◽  
Environmental Concern ◽  
The Political ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Planetary Boundaries ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Global Action

Ecologists have applied the concept of “carrying capacity”, the population of a species that an ecosystem can support, to human populations. Ecological limits to growth in population and the economy dominated environmental concern in the 1970s and beyond. More recently they have been supplanted by the idea of planetary boundaries, based on the stresses that the earth system is capable of absorbing, several of which (including biosphere integrity and climate change) have already been transgressed, suggesting the system is in grave peril. This chapter also considers the points of critics of the idea that there can be limits, then analyzes the political implications of limits and boundaries, from the authoritarianism associated with some 1970s thinkers to the need for cooperative global action to the more democratic possibilities that could be associated with degrowth and planetary boundaries.

scholarly journals Limits to growth of forest biomass carbon sink under climate change

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Zhu ◽  
Jian Zhang ◽  
Shuli Niu ◽  
Chengjin Chu ◽  
Yiqi Luo
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Carbon Sink ◽  
Forest Biomass ◽  
Biomass Carbon ◽  
Limits To Growth

The two limits debates: “Limits to Growth” and climate change

Futures ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Eastin ◽  
Reiner Grundmann ◽  
Aseem Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Limits To Growth

scholarly journals This time is different! Or is it? NeoMalthusians and environmental optimists in the age of climate change

2020 ◽  
pp. 002234332096978
Author(s):  
Nils Petter Gleditsch
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Limits To Growth ◽  
Third Phase ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Recent Variation ◽  
Long Term Trend

Warning about dire effects of climate change on armed conflict is a recent variation of a scenario that has been promoted by environmental pessimists for over two centuries. The essence is that human activities lead to resource scarcities that in turn will generate famine, pestilence, and war. This essay reviews three stages of the argument: first, the original Malthusian thesis that focused on food production. Second, the broader neoMalthusian concern from the 1970s about limits to growth and developing scarcities in a range of necessities. And recently, the specter of climate change. In each phase, the Malthusians have met firm opposition from environmental optimists, who argue that emerging scarcities can be countered by human ingenuity, technological progress, and national and international economic and political institutions and that environmental change is not in itself a major driver of human violence. In the third phase, the Malthusian case appears to be stronger because human activities have reached a level where they have a truly global impact. Environmental optimists still insist that these problems can be overcome by human ingenuity and that the long-term trend towards less violence in human affairs is unlikely to be reversed by climate change. The stakes seem higher, but the structure of the debate remains largely the same.

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