Europe is exhausted. It is exhausted after long years of what is labeled as the Eurozone crisis. It is exhausted after pro-longed years of political failure. Every single attempt of deepening the political union of Europe after the enactment of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the common currency that followed in 1999, failed in consecutive referendums. Remember Ireland 2001 with the Nice Treaty, remember the Netherlands and France in 2005 with the European constitution. This elitist concept of Europe was too much rooted in an overtly rationalist model of economic necessities.… Read more
The Great Transition
An Essay on Organization and Management in the Sustainability Society*
From crisis to meta-crisis
At the Convocation of the United Negro** College Fund in 1959, John F. Kennedy referred to the Chinese word for “crisis” being made up of two symbols, one denoting “danger” (wēi), and the other denoting “opportunity” (jī). Today, many decision makers in politics and the economy use this phrase addressing the slowly retreating economic and financial crisis.… Read more
Green growth vs. Postgrowth – Where the twain can meet
In the discussions on the future of economic growth, business as usual is not an option. That alone can be regarded as good news. When the modern narrative of growth is evoked in policy debates, it is always green growth that is summoned. Green growth is sought to be resource-efficient, low-carbon and socially inclusive. Green growth is the key strategy to battle climate change, bring eco-friendly development to emerging countries, renew economic structures in industrialized nations and produce robust jobs for a changing world.… Read more
IPAT and the End of Growth
In the early 1970s Ehrlich and Holdren devised a simple equation in dialogue with Commoner identifying three factors that created environmental impact. Thus, impact (I) was expressed as the product of (1) population, (P); (2) affluence (A); and (3) technology, (T):
I = P * A * T
Population is the number of people on the planet, affluence is measured in GDP per capita, and technology is environmental impact per GDP. When looking at the growth rates of each I, P, A, and T the formula changes towards this form:
dI = dP + dA + dT
In order to see how the impact changes from one year to the next one, you just have to sum up the changes in population increase, affluence, and technological progress.… Read more
Infinite happiness
When discussing the growth issue, especially from the perspective of degrowth, one argument comes up regularly. This argument can be termed “infinite happiness” and it goes something like this: economic growth might be restrained or needs to be restrained for various reasons but surely no one wants to put an end to growth in creativity, quality of life, and happiness. This is then usually followed by the demand to provide a new indicator for societal well-being, going beyond GDP and including all sorts of hard-to-be-tangibles.… Read more