1) The planet and its physical resources are either finite or "finitely renewable," i.e. water can only be recycled or desalinized to a point, and even the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth is limited to half the sphere at a given time. Math tells us there are physical, pragmatic limits to everything on Earth.
2) There are over
7 billion people on Earth, and the population keeps growing by 75 to 80 million per year (exact figures vary). This puts increasing burdens on limited resources like land acreage, energy, water, forests, other species, plus the atmosphere's ability to absorb
more CO2 and remain in equilibrium.
3) Today's monetary system is based on
loans created from thin air, which must be continuously paid off with interest, leading to more loans and causing the total debt load to grow. All the while, the system is forced to accommodate more people and everyone seems to realize it's a mess of un-payable debt.
Considering all of the above, why do politicians and businesses keep calling for
more growth when it's so obviously out of control already? It's like a junkie needing a bigger dose every day. Even those who promote "sustainable growth" must realize it's an oxymoron. How can anything keep getting larger in a finite realm and be sustainable?
"Grim" employment reports state that "job creation barely kept pace with population growth," as if it's perfectly fine for the population to keep growing, lemming-like. This website is full of complaints about overcrowding vs. quality of life in a given city, so why don't more people question the whole growth paradigm? Are they too hooked on the money aspect of the pyramid scheme they're part of?
If you told the people of Guam that their island economy
must physically grow forever, it would be an illogical, impossible request. So, why is that same concept (applied to the whole world) any different, except for the
time scale to reach consumption overload? It seems people have been delaying austerity and frugality because the world seems "too big to fail." It's large but it's still
finite. Symptoms of overload make news all the time.
A related question is: Why do conservatives harp on limits to monetary spending yet treat physical resources as virtually unlimited? "Drill, baby, drill!" (denial of
Peak Oil) is a good example. Why don't they make the connection between monetary debt and the physical debt underlying it?
This isn't just a futile rant.
Here's a solution to the growth dilemma, which has been discussed for decades outside the mainstream. Words like "recession" and "stagnation" are negatives to classical economists, but in nature they just mean
balance. When something that's grown too large for its own good finally stops growing, it should be welcomed, even if the transition isn't easy.
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