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Roger Pielke, Jr. has a piece out in Earth Island Journal. It is part of an exchange with John de Graaf, who argues that economic growth must end. Roger’s piece explores what it actually means to be anti-growth.
What Does It Mean to be Anti-Growth?
Earth Island Journal
Spring 2014
by Roger Pielke, Jr.
Excerpt: It has become fashionable in some circles to come out against economic growth. Bill McKibben, the author and climate change activist, asserts that “growth may be the one big habit we finally must break.” He adds that this is “a dark thing to say, and un-American.” Such calls for an end to growth are typically advanced in environmental debates and those about economic globalization. But what does it actually mean to be against economic growth? I argue that to be anti-growth actually implies keeping poor people poor.
Economic growth is simply a metric that reflects the accumulation of wealth over time, usually based on universalized US dollars. Economists define economic growth in three parts: (a) growth in labor, which refers to an increase in the number of people working; (b) growth in capital, which refers to increases in the availability of things that can be used by labor in the process of producing goods (like food) and services (like surgery); and (c) increasing productivity, which can be thought of as improvements in the efficiency with which we turn labor and capital into goods and services.
We can use the three components of economic growth to better understand what it means to be “anti-growth.” Read more …
