Grow or not grow

Desaceleracin

Do you? Recession? Consolidated Crisis? The headlines in recent months have triggered the alarm about what some philosophers, economists and environmentalists revolutionaries considered a disaster waiting to happen. Do you really believe that we have is an unlimited growth potential in a limited world? This is the question that the drivers of this movement on the rise not new, so-called decline, launched into the air while responding loudly: it is not possible to continue to grow at this pace because there are not enough natural resources.

(Illustration: Akirant)

Since the eighteenth century has been transformed 45% of the territory on the planet. Today, cities occupy 2% of all continents and grow to 0.25% per annum. In the last century, the population has quadrupled and continues to grow by 1% each year and the energy and water consumption per person has increased by 20. Decrecentistas and scientists warn us: 'We have exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth !.

And it is a disaster waiting to happen because it had already warned experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the 70 when they prepared a report for the Club of Rome, and long before Mahatma Gandhi, and long before the same classical economists, such as John Stuart Mill or Joseph Schumpeter, who augured that the indefinite accumulation was not possible and it would come sooner or later the deadlock. But the economic euphoria of the second half of the twentieth century brought amnesia, and soon the world will forget their own limits.

The decrease

Theory is presented as an alternative, a third path to a happier world, that goes beyond sustainable development (which considers an oxymoron), but rather than propose a specific solution aims to break with the entrenched belief comparable, as its drivers, a religious faith that economic growth brings prosperity. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), they say, is an indicator unrealistic because it does not take into account the value of natural resources, which should be integrated into the economy, nor the intangibles that do affect the economic flow (such as work domestic or deterioration of social life due to excessive work), nor the quality of life of people.

The system requires economic growth continued to remain.

The idea is that today we are not rich because we have more cars, but poorer because we have less Amazon jungle. In the words of French anthropologist and economist Serge LATOUCHE, one of the current guidelines of this movement, we live in "a dictatorship of the rate of growth 'that' force to the developed societies to live beyond any reasonable need." That is, the current economy can not survive without ceasing to grow, so any slowdown in growth poses a serious blow to its foundations, and their good health going to continue to grow exponentially. The indefinite accumulation of goods and services is, in fact, the engine of the current economic model. And it's not a matter of capitalism or socialism, they point out, since all known models until now have relied on growth.

LATOUCHE recalls the unhappiness that is causing the current model, with an increasing rate of suicides, anxiety, fear and need to be protected from the adverse effects of development. In fact, the exponential accumulation system that is holding today, according to him, which leads to the social disease called consumerism, which creates an illusory and greed makes us despise the objects that we still valid, but not new to those who do not want us and that the market offers us on a plate. A system that has come to its own contradiction, because the rapid pace of production of goods would be almost inversely proportional to the rate of loss of natural resources. "The wheel spins ever faster just to stay the same, or worse," says Ernest Garcia, professor of anthropology at the University of Valencia.

The decrease

Invited to voluntarily adopt a simpler lifestyle.

Therefore, more than ever, for , the goal is to break with the current trend and return the environment to the area of trade. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, father of the concept, was among the first to detect cracks in the economic system and warned that it was not in accordance with the laws of physics and biological weapons. Of these fissures, say its advocates, there are problems such as poverty. For them, something's wrong when the shares of a company rises to dismiss their employees en masse when wars or increase the GDP of some countries. "The machine will start to create goods and products is the same as systematically creates misery," said former Iranian diplomat Majid Rahnema. New indicators such as the ecological footprint is rising as more realistic alternatives aside the GDP.

What is the solution? The decrease is not about a slowdown or negative GDP growth, but to a lack of economic growth in favor of an increased welfare, accompanied by a falling population. The motto is "live better with less' ... But how? This is where the various theoretical forks. There are those that require giving up any technology, which portend the end of human civilization, which proposes a drastic reduction in the population or those who trust in the wisdom of man to make a gradual transition towards a true welfare society. "This is to maintain a certain standard of living. Slower, smaller, better, "says Ernest Garcia. In any case, the transition to the decrease may not arise in economic terms, recalls LATOUCHE.

Thus, there is no definite pattern, but suggestions of a future society based on cooperation, efficiency and respect for nature, where the right technology, such as renewable energy, we would keep many of the habits of life to which we are accustomed. "There is no question of returning to the caves," added the professor, for relief of many. But ... What is wrong with the caves?, He wondered LATOUCHE.

Negavatio

Factor 4

Disvalor

Downshift

Entropy

Green GDP

Negavatio

A proposal to calculate the energy saved.

In 1989, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute in the United States, coined the term to refer to the unit of measurement for energy efficiency, or whatever it is, the energy saved. In a famous lecture in Montreal, Lovins criticized the enormous expense and useless that the U.S. took in providing electricity when it could do so much more cheaply and efficiently. Specifically, the concept of is to invest to make more efficient energy consumption rather than to generate more energy. The benefits would be for both the economy and the environment.

Lovins speculated about a possible market in which it could negotiate with these units.

Factor 4

We can be four times more efficient.

In 1972, a report by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) commissioned by the Club of Rome left stunned the world by raising the unlimited growth was not possible in a world limited. Almost 15 years later, the Club of Rome commissioned a new report, this time written by A. Lovins, author of , and the U.S. von Weizsker, the Wuppertal Institute in Germany. The report stated that with the available technology could multiply by four efficiency and increase welfare by reducing by half the consumption of resources and conserving the rest. But efficiency is a dreaded rebound effect known as the Jevons paradox that makes the consumption of a resource increases with increasing efficiency.

Disvalor

All that does not take into account the economy.

Was in 1968 when thinkers such as Ivan Illich first used this concept framed in a critique of the economics. The relates to losses that can not be calculated in economic terms. The German philosopher, known iconoclast, he as an example of the impossibility of estimating the economy since the loss that it represents an individual to the absence of feet in a world dominated by the car: "The economist has no means of assessing what is happening a person who loses the effective use of their feet because the car exerts a monopoly on the radical movement. " In the same vein, other authors criticize the inability of the economy to calculate the value of the factors that increase the well-being, as free time.

Downshift

A shift towards simplicity of life.

Take

Simplicity as a way of life is the theme of several of the movements that occur parallel to the decrease. One of them is downshifting (down our pace of life), very similar (and in fact have joined) to the Slow movement (apology for what paused). The lifestyle slow or downshifted supposed to work less and spend more time on welfare: to be with friends and family, eat slowly, to stroll and enjoy. The chances of achieving a downshift are higher in small towns (according to the Slow movement, with populations of no more than 60,000 inhabitants). It is about changing the schedule of values and priorities in a society that is dedicated to ten times more hours at work to children.

Entropy

What that tells us the theory of thermodynamics.

Romanian economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen was the father of ecological economics or bio-economy, so we also had as a teacher by the theorists of decline. Georgescu was restated the validity of neoclassical economics-the-force it to be disconnected from the physical and biological. The big news of this revolutionary theory was to incorporate into the economy, the laws of thermodynamics. Specifically, Georgescu was based on entropy (second law of thermodynamics) to talk about the inevitable economic scarcity: all production represents a drop of energy. The growth was thus harm and paradoxical, because they are destined to end up with the resources needed precisely to grow.

Green GDP

In search of the indicator

More faithful to reality.

The failure of GDP as an indicator of living standards of a society has prompted several economists to think in a new meter that includes many other parameters, including the environment. One of the new indicators is the HANPP (Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production from Biomass), which measures the loss of biodiversity. But it also does not measure all aspects affecting the reality, so it was shuffled the notion of creating a green GDP index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) or the Genuine Progress Index (GPI). Perhaps the meter is the most widespread ecological footprint, which calculates the hectares that each person needs to satisfy his life, even to absorb the CO2 emitted.