#34 - Climate Change II: Growth, Degrowth, Reactions, Responses

In this episode Ben convinces Vaden to become a degrowther. We plan how to live out the rest of our lives on an organic tomato farm in Canada in December, sewing our own clothes and waxing our own candles. Step away from the thermostat Jimmy.

We discuss:

• The degrowth movement
• The basics of economic growth, and why it's good for developing economies in particular
• How growth enables resilience in the face of environmental disasters
• Why the environment is in better shape than you think
• Availability bias and our tendency to think everything is falling apart
• The decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions
• Energy dense production and energy portfolios

And we respond to some of your criticism of the previous episode, including:

• Apocalyptic environmental predictions been happening for a while? Really?
• Number of annual cold deaths exceed the number of annual heat deaths? Really?
• Your previous episode was very human-centric, and failed to address the damage humans are causing to the environment. What say you?
• Are we right wing crypto-fascists? (Answer: Maybe, successfully dodged the question)

Social media everywhere

• Follow us on Twitter at @IncrementsPod, @BennyChugg, @VadenMasrani
• Check us out on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_4wZzQyoW4s4ZuE4FY9DQQ
• Come join our discord server! DM one of us on twitter, or send an email to [email protected] to get a link

References

• Two natural experiments on curtailing economic growth. Energy Crunch, and the effect of Covid-19 on developing countries (world bank)
• 10x more cold deaths than heat deaths. Original study in the Lancet. Chilling Effect by Scott Alexander.
• Decoupling of economic growth and pollution by Zeke Hausfather of the Breakthrough institute.
• Air Pollution Trends data (EPA)
• Number of deaths from natural disasters (Our World in Data). Original data taken from the EMDAT Natural Disasters database.
• Increase in global canopy cover
• 99 Good News Stories in 2018 you probably didn't hear about
• ...and 2019
• ...and 2020 (also sign up for the FutureCrunch newsletter!)
• The Environmental Kuznets curves

Quotes

On Degrowth

This would be a way of life based on modest material and energy needs but nevertheless rich in other dimensions – a life of frugal abundance. It is about creating an economy based on sufficiency, knowing how much is enough to live well, and discovering that enough is plenty.

In a degrowth society we would aspire to localise our economies as far and as appropriately as possible. This would assist with reducing carbon-intensive global trade, while also building resilience in the face of an uncertain and turbulen...