<
https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/13/what-does-progress-look-like-on-a-planet-at-its-limit>
"In the 20th century, the definition of progress seemed clear. It was growth,
measured in terms of national income, or gross domestic product (GDP). And that
growth was to be endless, an ever-rising curve. No matter how rich a nation
already was, its politicians and economists would consistently claim that the
solutions to its problems – from poverty to pollution – depended on yet more
growth.
But this promise has not been delivered on. It is clearly time to reimagine the
shape of progress and, with it, the policies that could bring about prosperity
for a fractured humanity on a destabilised planet.
First, it’s useful to recognise the appeal of growth. It is, after all, a
wonderful, healthy phase of life, which is why people the world over love to
see children, gardens and trees grow. No wonder the western mind so readily
accepted it as the shape of economic progress, too, and simultaneously adopted
the very 20th-century mantra that “more is better”, both personally and
nationally.
Yet if we look to nature, it’s clear that nothing succeeds by growing for ever:
anything that seeks to do so will, in the process, destroy itself or the system
on which it depends. Things that succeed grow until they are grown up, at which
point they mature, enabling them to thrive, sometimes for hundreds of years. As
the biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus reminds us, a tree keeps growing only up
to the point that it is still capable of sending nutrients to the leaves at the
outermost tips of its branches, at which point it stops. Its pursuit of growth
is bounded by a greater goal of distributing and circulating the resources that
nurture and sustain the health of its whole being.
Although we can easily appreciate the limits of growth in the living world,
when it comes to our economies, we have a harder time. Thanks to the
availability of cheap fossil fuel-based energy in the 20th century, rapid
economic growth came to be seen as normal and natural, indeed as essential. Its
continuation over many decades led to the creation of institutional designs and
policies – from credit creation to shareholder dividends to pension funds –
that are structurally dependent on growth without end. In other words, we have
inherited economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive."
Via
Fix the News:
<
https://fixthenews.com/good-news-cancer-canada-conservation-png-iberian-lynx/>
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
