4: Growth and the environment Flashcards
What has historically been coupled?
Economic growth and environmental degradation/depletion
What is the Steady Environmental Degradation Theory? Examples
Degradation of the environment occurs slowly, to the point where we might not even notice it (like pulling threads out of a tapestry)
e.g. Aral sea, pollution, smoke
How is the Aral Sea an example of the steady environmental degradation theory
Degradation over time as major rivers that fed it were diverted into leaky irrigation canals to feed cotton farms. It took a long time for the sea to retreat as the amount of water flowing into it diminished.
Used to be the size of Ireland, now 80% is dried up. It is now a desert.
Quality of life in the area decreased slowly with the sea.
What did Thomas Malthus write about in ‘An Essay on the Principle of Population’
- humans are too immoral and undisciplined to control their urges (will keep reproducing)
- human population would inevitably grow larger than available food supply and eventually collapse due to overshooting ecological carrying capacity
What is Malthusian growth
Oscillations in population size around carrying capacity
(overshoot K, then a dieback and then overshoot again)
Most collapse theories are based on occurrences such as… (4)
- environmental collapse due to overconsuming a renewable resource e.g. fish
- economic collapse due to the rapid decline of important ecosystem functions e.g. loss of bees to pollinate crops
- economic collapse due to rapid decline of a non-renewable resource e.g. oil
- conflict and societal breakdown due to the impacts of the above factors e.g. climate refugees
Key element of collapse theories
That at some point in time terrible consequences will occur without a great deal of prior warning
Who was Paul Ehlrich?
Theorized on The Population Bomb (1968)
That in the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now (similar to the Malthusian catastrophe).
What did the Club of Rome publish
In 1972, a report ‘Limits to Growth’
Studied the predicament of mankind in the face of technology growing at an exponential rate
The collapse based mostly upon source issues where shortages of fossil fuels and fertilizer cause a food supply collapse (and associated conflict)
What are the BAU scenarios
Business as usual: if present economic and population growth trends continued then Global Collapse would occur within 100 years
BAU 1 and 2
What are two alternative scenarios to BAU
- comprehensive technology: invention of new technologies, moving to renewables
- stabilized world: constraining growth of population, keeping consumption/production down
Those promoting degrowth argue that we need to do the following…
- Accept the limits to growth and integrate the finite ecological limits of our planet into governing the economy
- Refocus the economy in wealthy nations towards material sufficiency and non-consumptive human well being
- Tackle systematic economic inequality to address issues of poverty through processes of redistribution as opposed to growth
Who was Paul Gilding
Ted talk
Decoupler, believes we can transform our economy with proven technologies at an affordable cost and with existing political structures
Decoupling refers to…
breaking the link between economic growth and environmental degradation allowing growth to continue without additional environmental harm
How does decoupling include efficiency?
Make efficiency improvements to a level where growth does NOT cause environmental harm, growth could occur while environmental conditions improve
