The Deakins 2010 - Prosperity Without Growth

The speaker for this session is Professor Tim Jackson, author of the book Prosperity Without Growth

The official description for this session states:

So much of the analysis of how we respond to climate change assumes that economic growth and emissions reduction are compatible goals. But is this wishful thinking? To question maximising economic growth as an organising principle of society seems close to economic heresy.

But is there any evidence that we can de-link consumption and economic growth from emissions growth? Must we re-think the very notion of growth and what it means to be genuinely prosperous?

The fundamental question is: How can our economy continue to expand on a finite planet? During the first five minutes of the talk, Professor Jackson refers to the work on the Club of Rome back in the 1970s and the current work of the Stockholm Resilience Centre on planetary boundaries that I discussed at this post. At the current level of economic activity we are outside planetary boundaries, in a position of ecological overshoot, but if our economy continues to grow at the same rate as the last 50 years it will be 16 times bigger than the current size, by the year 2100. Our default economic model seems to be unsustainable.



Here is a talk that Jackson gave at TED: