A Steady-State Economy

Interesting articles
Time to banish the god of growth
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opinion/mg20026782.500-editorial-tim...

'In 1972, three scientists from MIT created a computer model that analyzed global resource consumption and production. Their results published through the Club of Rome (http://www.clubofrome.org/) shocked the world and created stirring conversation about global 'overshoot,' or resource use beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. The Environmental scientists Donnella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and Dennis Meadows have teamed up to update and expand their original findings in The Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Global Update.
Meadows, Randers, and Meadows are international environmental leaders recognized for their groundbreaking research into early signs of wear on the planet. Citing climate change as the most tangible example of our current overshoot, the scientists now provide us with an updated scenario and a plan to reduce our needs to meet the carrying capacity of the planet.
Over the past three decades, population growth and global warming have forged on with a striking semblance to the scenarios laid out by the World3 computer model in the original Limits to Growth. While Meadows, Randers, and Meadows do not make a practice of predicting future environmental degradation, they offer an analysis of present and future trends in resource use, and assess a variety of possible outcomes.
In many ways, the message contained in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a warning. Overshoot cannot be sustained without collapse. But, as the authors are careful to point out, there is reason to believe that humanity can still reverse some of its damage to Earth if it takes appropriate measures to reduce inefficiency and waste.
Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update is a long anticipated revival of some of the original voices in the growing chorus of sustainability. Limits to Growth: The 30 Year Update is a work of stunning intelligence that will expose for humanity the hazy but critical line between human growth and human development.'

Limits to growth: The 30-year Update
By Donella H. Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Dennis Meadows
Published by Chelsea Green Pub., 2004
ISBN 1931498512, 9781931498517

Synopsis
http://www.clubofrome.at/archive/limits.pdf

Abstract of 1972 publication
http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf

This blog is operated by nef (the new economics foundation).

The world is currently experiencing a 'triple crunch' of financial crisis, climate change and high oil prices. http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_PublicationDetail.aspx?pid=267

From the Ashes of the Crash
http://www.neweconomics.org/gen/z_sys_PublicationDetail.aspx?pid=268

Current responses simply aren’t getting to the root of the problem. As the world slips further into financial and environmental freefall, this blog builds on over 20 years of new economics thinking and practice to set out solutions to the interlinked challenges we face.
http://neftriplecrunch.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/paradigm-reclaimed-why-a...
and
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/04/economics-economy

Based on then ground-breaking modelling, the forecasts of global ecological and economic collapse by mid-century contained in the controversial 1972 book; The Limits to Growth, are still 'on-track' according to new CSIRO research.

The Limits to Growth' modelled scenarios for the future global economy and environment and recommended far reaching changes to the way we live to avoid disaster.

In a paper published in the August edition of the international journal; Global Environmental Change, CSIRO physicist Dr Graham Turner compares forecasts from the book with global data from the past 30 years.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VFV-4T7D8DY-1...

"The real-world data basically supports The Limits to Growth model," he says. "It shows that for the first 30 years of the model, the world has been tracking along the unsustainable trajectory of the book's business-as-usual scenario."

http://www.csiro.au/multimedia/Growth-Limits.html

http://www.csiro.au/files/files/plje.pdf

Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster
http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/2009/02/18/managing-without-growth-slower-...

Hundreds if not thousands of intellectuals across the world have by now come to their own conclusion that continued economic growth on this planet no longer makes sense, since the present rates of consumption in developed countries are unsustainable.

Summary: This paper is about adapting the economic system so that it can respond to the challenge of climate change. It argues that the highest priority has to be given to eliminating the need for rich countries to continue to grow economically if they are to prevent their economies collapsing. The paper argues that their need for growth arises because they issue their money as a debt. If this was changed in the way suggested, they would be able to cut their emissions sharply with immediate effect.

The paper also discusses other monetary changes needed to give governments the economic freedom to respond the climate crisis and suggests the introduction of a system of tradable personal emissions allocations to protect the poor from the worst effects of the higher energy prices that will result from effective restrictions on greenhouse emissions.
http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/Feasta_Stern_Review.htm

IN 2004 Barry Schwartz published a book on how too much choice can increase wrong decisions and reduce wellbeing.
The following link is a 20 minute presentation that you should find of interest.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choi...

The current economic growth agenda demands increasing individual choice in order to keep expanding. As can be seen perhaps this is another area that proves that we have hit our limits of growth?

The First International De-growth Conference was held in Paris last year in April 2008. More than 100 international Scientists and members of civil society from social, environmental, physical or economic backgrounds contributed to the Paris conference on " Economic Degrowth for Sustainability and Equity ".
Proceedings are available from:
http://events.it-sudparis.eu/degrowthconference/en/appel/Degrowth%20Conf...

Economic De-growth for Sustainability and Equity
http://www.degrowth.net/Economic-Degrowth-for

Transition to a Sustainable Economy

Tim Jackson (2009), Report to Sustainable Development Commission, London: Sustainable Development Commission.

SDC latest report argues that the pursuit of economic growth is one of the root causes of the current financial crisis, as well contributing to a growing environmental crisis and undermining well-being in developed countries.

Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That at least is the conventional wisdom. But things haven’t always turned out that way.

Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth. For the last five decades the pursuit of growth has been the single most important policy goal across the world. The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/prosperity_withou...

Listen to Tim Jackson on the dilemma of economic growth
He is Professor of Sustainable Development in the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at the University of Surrey.
http://preview.fatbeehivefilms.com/sdc/pwg_final_edit.mp3

'MY STORY starts with a theory that Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher sold us. It is called "supply-side economics", and it claims that economic growth depends, first, on the rich (not the poor) being rewarded with tax cuts; and second, on markets being freed from regulation.

Clearly the theory is flawed. The rush by bankers to pay themselves large bonuses, even as their failing banks were being nationalised, reveals the true function of this bloated remuneration - to benefit only its recipients - while the banks failed precisely because their regulation was too lax.'
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327181.200-falling-out-of-love-w...

Beyond the Growth Paradigm
A new intellectual renaissance has begun

Interesting articles originally posted by Chris J.
https://www.adbusters.org/magazine/85

Great site with lots of useful economic texts and information.
http://www.paecon.net/

The Enlightened!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVp8UGjECt4

Interesting link from John M.

By 2050 or so, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, essentially adding two Chinas to the number of people alive today. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where, scientists say, humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. In Dot Earth, reporter Andrew C. Revkin examines efforts to balance human affairs with the planet’s limits. Supported in part by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, Mr. Revkin tracks relevant news from suburbia to Siberia, and conducts an interactive exploration of trends and ideas with readers and experts.

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/daly-on/

Rich nations will have to forget about growth to stop climate change

Economic expansion cannot be achieved forever if greenhouse gases are to be curbed, warns the leading economist and author of the UK's government's report on climate change

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/11/stern-economic-growth-...

Temporary Recession or the End of Growth?
http://heinberg.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/museletter-208-_-august-2009...

Peak oil - coming soon but when?
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue50/Smith50.pdf

Contemporary economics and the crisis
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue50/Lawson50.pdf

Biophysical economics is characterized by a wide range of analysts from diverse fields who use ecology and thermodynamics to analyze the economic process. The history of biophysical thought is traced from the 18th-century Physiocrats to current empirical research, with emphasis on those individuals who contributed to the development of biophysical economic theory. Attention is also given to a critique of the neoclassical theory of natural resources from a biophysical perspective, and how recent empirical biophysical research highlights areas of neoclassical theory which could be improved by a more realistic and systematic treatment of natural resources.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Biophysical_economics

Measuring what matters
Man does not live by GDP alone. A new report urges statisticians to capture what people do live by.
http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14447...

Forget GDP: happiness is the secret of success
Rising national wealth does not necessarily make people more satisfied with their lot, so economists and politicians are looking beyond growth to questions of well-being.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/20/economics-wealth-gdp-happ...

Stiglitz/Sen/Fitoussi report
http://www.stiglitz-sen-fitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf

“GDP has increasingly become used as a measure of societal well-being and changes in the structure of the economy and our society have made it increasingly poor one,” Stiglitz said in an interview.

John Stuart Mill
Principles of Political Economy" - Book IV, Chapter VI
(1848)

http://www.panarchy.org/mill/stationary.1848.html

Economics and the Case of Rational Addiction Theories

Rational addiction theories illustrate how absurd choice theories in economics get taken seriously as possibly true explanations and tools for welfare analysis despite being poorly interpreted, empirically unfalsifiable, and based on wildly inaccurate assumptions selectively justified by ad-hoc stories. The lack of transparency introduced by poorly anchored mathematical models, the psychological persuasiveness of stories, and the way the profession neglects relevant issues are suggested as explanations for how what we perhaps should see as displays of technical skill and ingenuity are allowed to blur the lines between science and games.

(Oil as an addictive substance)

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/addiction.pdf

This is an analysis of both conventional money and the new community money, in the context of a sustainable economy. A sustainable economy cannot be achieved while we continue to depend on conventional money. This assertion is supported not only by concise theoretical analysis, but also by observations gathered from all around the world over many centuries.
http://www.gmlets.u-net.com/explore/sustain.html

60 Years of the WIR Economic Circle Cooperative
Origins and Ideology of the Wirtschaftsring
http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/wir.html
http://www.wir.ch/index.cfm?DC86BF333C1811D6B9950001020761E5&o_lang_id=1

http://beyondmoney.net/

Money as Debt 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJRf_Bh5HMI&annotation_id=annotation_2573...

Two good reports spotted by Mike H.

The financial system needs to start working like a productive ecosystem. It should be characterised by diversity and an ability to sustain specialised and adapted life in the face of external shocks. Instead of a monoculture of mega-banks deemed too big to fail and answerable only to the demands of private shareholders, an ecology of finance would involve a range of different financial institutions.
http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/Ecology_of_Fina...

How can the money system be made to work better? How can its workings be made less mysterious - easier for politicians and citizens to understand? This report gives the answers.
The existing money system is out of date. In modern democratic societies, the value created by issuing new money should be a common, not a private, resource. New money should be put into circulation as public spending, not as profit-making loans by commercial banks. In Britain, the result would be equivalent to 12p off income tax. Other countries would benefit comparably.
In the information age, money has mainly become information, electronically stored and transmitted. Monetary policies that serve the public interest can no longer be founded on a smoke-and-mirrors fiction that “real money” lurks behind the information.
http://www.neweconomics.org/sites/neweconomics.org/files/Creating_New_Mo...

Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization (CSIRO)
http://www.csiro.au/resources/SEEDPaper19.html

http://www.wonderfulworldmedia.net/?p=214

Sheet no.1 in the Free Range 'Energy Beyond Oil' Project's 'Simplicity/Less' series of handouts looks at Limits to Growth – Why the Only Solution is "Less".
http://www.fraw.org.uk/download/ebo/s01/index.shtml

In this paper, Partha Dasgupta formalizes the idea of sustainable development in terms of intergenerational well-being. He then sketches an argument that has recently been put forward formally to demonstrate that intergenerational well-being increases over time if and only if a comprehensive measure of wealth per capita increases. The measure of wealth includes not only manufactured capital, knowledge and human capital (education and health), but also natural capital (e.g. ecosystems). He shows that a country's comprehensive wealth per capita can decline even while gross domestic product (GDP) per capita increases and the UN Human Development Index records an improvement...

http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1537/5.full.pdf+html

Continuing global economic growth "is not possible" if nations are to tackle climate change, a report by an environmental think-tank has warned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8478770.stm

http://www.neweconomics.org/publications/growth-isnt-possible?utm_source...

The Impossible Hamster
http://www.impossiblehamster.org/