From the UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA and the department of climate lexicons comes this new phrase.
The new theory of economic ‘agrowth’ contributes to the viability of climate policies
Forty-five years after the first proposal on the limits to growth by the Club of Rome, the increasing concern over climate change and how to deal with it has reopened the debate questioning whether climate change mitigation policies are compatible with economic growth.
Many citizens, scientists and politicians fear that stringent climate policy will harm economic growth. While some are betting on “anti-growth” or “degrowth”, others advocate for the “green growth” which is compatible with a transition to a low-carbon economy.
A study by ICREA professor at ICTA-UAB Jeroen van den Bergh critically reflects on both positions “that jeopardize environmental or social goals”, while a third position, labelled “agrowth”, is proposed to depolarize the debate and reduce resistance to climate policies.
In the study, published recently in Nature Climate Change, “agrowth” is proposed as an alternative to the current disjunction between the “green growth” and “degrowth” positions. As it is impossible to know for sure whether growth and a stable climate are compatible, van den Bergh considers that it is better to be agnostic about growth and proposes a strategy that discounts GDP as an indicator “since growth is not an ultimate end, not even the means to an end”.
Regarding the two other existing positions, Jeroen van den Bergh says that “green growth” is the dominant strategy among those accepting climate change as a serious threat and searching for solutions which minimise growth effects. “The Paris climate agreement reflects this, through its voluntary national pledges without back-up from globally consistent policies. One must expect non-compliance, energy rebound and carbon leakage as a result, promising the agreement to be highly ineffective”.
The economy has a tremendous flexibility to adapt, through new technologies and changes in the composition of consumption and production. However, adaptation will not be complete and rapid without severe environmental regulation. It is not clear beforehand, though, that the ensuing economic transition will concur with economic growth. In fact, the new study finds that the empirical evidence and theoretical support for green growth under serious climate policies is feeble. In other words, being categorically pro-growth is a risk-seeking strategy with regard to climate change.
Literature describes that economic growth in rich countries anyway no longer contributes meaningfully to progress. Most people amply satisfy their basic needs, while poor people stand to benefit more from distributional measures, such as progressive income taxes, social security, public health care and a decent minimum wage.
“If the GDP indicator does not capture societal progress in rich nations, the time has come to ignore it”, says van den Bergh. Therefore, “degrowth” and “zero growth” proposals are not considered feasible either, since they actually seek to reverse growth and cause a decline in GDP. He also indicates that anti-growth proposals lack a basis in rigorous science and thus can easily do more harm than good for society.
“One can be concerned or critical about economic growth without resorting to an anti-growth position”, states the author. He goes on to highlight that an “agrowth” strategy will allow us to scan a wider space for policies that improve welfare and environmental conditions. Policy selection will not be constrained by the goal of economic growth. “One does not need to assume that unemployment, inequity and environmental challenges are solved by unconditional pro- or zero/negative growth. Social and environmental policies sometimes restrain and at other times stimulate growth, depending on contextual factors. An “agrowth” strategy is precautionary as it makes society less sensitive to potential scenarios in which climate policy constrains economic growth. Hence, it will reduce resistance to such policy”, he indicates.
In a practical sense, van den Bergh states that it is necessary to combat the social belief – widespread among policy circles and politics – that growth has to be prioritized, and stresses the need for a debate in politics and wider society about stepping outside the futile framing of pro- versus anti-growth. “Realizing there is a third way can help to overcome current polarization and weaken political resistance against a serious climate policy”.
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More spin on the narrative for eliminating fossil fuels. Nothing more.
Exactly. This is just another blatant attempt to keep alive a failing argument, another change in terms to let the lefties pretend there’s something new, when in fact, it’s still just the same old failing argument. Green jobs are lost opportunities. A “green” economy is a smaller economy. A smaller economy is NOT growing, it’s shrinking. Oil and fossil fuels are all about improved efficiency. Going to other sources of energy is tantamount to LOSING efficiency, LOSING energy density, INCREASING costs and overhead.
Stop insulting our intelligence.
Exactly. A green economy is the exact opposite of progress.
Growth is the anathema to totalitarians. If the economy is growing, there is less need for dependence, and thus less need for dictators to ration everything.
I think it’s a conundrum that the people who bitch about poverty and wealth concentration tend to be the same people who advocate transforming the economy into a zero-sum game.
For the most part, the people who moan the most about poverty are also the biggest supporter of government programs that are the biggest creator of poverty in this country.
Look at GDP 2008 during the financial crisis and tell us again that it isn’t a reliable indicator.
According to Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, whenever rate of return on capital is greater than the rate of economic growth over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth.
If we are willing to consider a zero growth or even de-growth strategy, concentration of wealth can only be prevented by a negative rate of return on capital, but then no sane person would invest a penny in anything, so the entire economy would grind to a screeching halt.
That means whoever insists stopping growth, promotes patrimonial capitalism with the same breath. That much should be understood.
The concentration of wealth increases as the fertility rate declines. Europe and Japan have seen this occur faster than has the US.
Not so.
Gini index for distribution of wealth is 0.803 in the US, 0.730 in France, 0.679 in the UK, 0.667 in Germany and 0.547 in Japan.
Gini index for income inequality after taxes and transfers is 0.378 in the US, 0.293 in France, 0.345 in the UK, 0.295 in Germany and 0.329 in Japan.
Population growth rate is 0.75% in the US, 0.45% in France, 0.63% in the UK, 0.06% in Germany and -0.12% in Japan.
If anything, the trend is quite the opposite. Also, please note inequality is way more in wealth than in income. Which means the wealthier you are, the more opportunity you have to hide your income.
One way to “hide” your income in the US is through backing municipal bonds, ie. loaning money to local towns/cities/counties. Interest collected on these bonds is 100% tax-deductible. Of course, to take real advantage of this, you need a few million dollars to loan out first.
“Agrowth”— Orwell was right again, it seems totalitarians have a propensity for dreaming up neologisms to mask their real intentions: “… adaptation will not be complete and rapid without severe environmental regulation”.
There certainly has been tremendous growth of a-holes due to global warming theory.
Agrowth is the observation that economic growth can move well-being forward and backward or in the terms of the paper, progress and regress. Removing the palliative from the term economic growth and keeping the pejorative as well at bay it is hoped that a new view of economic growth can be accepted where the benefits and costs can be more reasonably discussed where climate change is one of those costs.
Whether that it is a useful or valid framing of economic growth is another matter entirely.
Didn’t Spain just bankrupt itself with a bunch of agrowth solar crap?
Spanish unemployment rate:
?w=750
Youth unemployment is around 45%.
There is not much science or technology in this paper from a Professor at an Institute of Science&Technology. Seemingly just more global-warming politics.
There’s a few sentences where he appears to be trying to sound reasonable about the harm most “green” proposals will cause, but this sentence is still the give-away for me:
This is language we hear a bit more often from homo climaticus when the prospect of not getting their own way finally dawns on them. All of a sudden there is a “debate”, is there? We’re more used to being told that “the debate is over”. You can tell they still don’t really believe in having a debate because, as he indicates, it is really only another ploy to get their harmful policies forced upon the unwilling.
Yes, and noticed the purpose of any “debate” is only to “reduce resistance” to predetermined policies; not to seek truth…
What a load of socialistic claptrap that article was.
‘Literature describes that economic growth in rich countries anyway no longer contributes meaningfully to progress.’
Gibberish.
Unnamed sources. What definition is he using for ‘progress?’ Why does economic growth have to contribute to progress, whatever that means?
From an economic standpoint, the point this author appears to be addressing (in a roundabout sort of way) is that “green” advocates recognize that “green” policies are Malthusian and anti-growth, so they came up with the idea of “green-growth” to claim that “growth” in “green” industries would somehow overcome the inevitable shrinkage those policies would create. Low and behold, the experienced reality is that the regulation and subsidies required to create “green-growth” are Malthusian and anti-growth and result in a net negative impact on overall growth, so the “green-growth” concept has run its course and a new concept is necessary, hence “agrowth”.
Unfortunately, “agrowth” is a misnomer, as it is not really a “growth” concept at all. It attempts to avoid the issue by questioning whether growth is necessary while at the same time arguing that reallocation of resources should be considered a form of “growth”. One could make a valid theoretical argument (as appears to be the case here) that a technically advanced society with negative population growth has no need of overall economic growth, and could rely (at least in the short-term) on redistributive policies. The test-case at the moment is Japan. Unfortunately, this requires ignoring inconvenient details such as migration pressure originating in countries where population-growth exceeds economic-growth, infrastructure-decay, the growing socialized cost of caring for a population where the median age is rising, etc., etc. Being a series of islands with a generally homogenous population, Japan has the means to offset migration pressure. How it deals with the other issues remains to be seen.
As for the issue of GDP, its true value lies in laying it against other measures. For instance: a country with a rising population and a shrinking GDP would be an indicator of political instability. Best to keep an eye on it.
There are so many things wrong with the concept that it’s hard to know where to start in debunking it. One approach is to counter the sustainability of no-growth policy or redistribution as a form of growth. And Japan might seem like a test-case on the surface but it’s not all that close in totality. It is running out of options after a series of central banks moves that did not work. It relies on an external source for its regional security in an increasing menacing region and it was the original model for export driven industrial strategy producing chronic export surpluses and only limited low-tech consumer goods for imports plus energy. In other words Japan, and now all of Asia are using the same one-sided industrial strategy of exports and technological advancement at the expense of the U.S. for advancement and wealth. Sustainability or lack thereof is the key to question and there is none of that to be had unless you ignore it like the advocates do for a living.
a-growth. a-gnostic. a-historical/an-historical. a-rational. a-cellular. a-cephalous.