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The End of Growth by Richard Heinberg (view source)
Revision as of 10:30, 3 December 2011
, 10:30, 3 December 2011no edit summary
With the newspapers full of economic doom and gloom the last thing you might want is to pick up a book that reiterates it and then some. But while this book may seem at first glance to be a bit of a downer, it also provides an insight into how things might just work out ok in the end. Yes, they’ll be some big changes – there have to be because the direction we’ve been heading in is just not sustainable – but if we’re willing to adapt, we will survive was the main message I picked up as I flicked through the pages.
With chapters including ''The New Normal'' (perhaps surprisingly, this is the first, not final section), ''The Great Balloon Race'' and ''Shrinking Pie'' it all sounds rather jolly, but of course the topic is anything but. The author argues that it’s not just the end of growth, but may also be the start of a reversing trend – an economic contraction if you will – as a result of the depletion of natural resources, the state of the environmental environment and a little thing called masses of debt. Some of this of course is not new – we were learning about exhausting fossil fuels when I was at primary school in the 80s – but it’s the culmination of several factors at once that’s pushing us into a brick wall of disaster unless we can put the breaks on. And a change of focus from the pursuit of happiness – GNH, or Gross National Happiness, that is – in lieu of ever increasing GDP may be just the ticket.
The book is logical, which I liked. It starts in the past and works to the future, looking at how we ended up where we are, how some of it seemed a good idea at the time, and how our lives now have such a strong trajectory it’s going to be hard to do the 180 degree about turn that may be needed.