BBC: Economic Growth “Cannot Continue”
This article is brilliant.
Some highlights:
The New Economics Foundation (Nef) said “unprecedented and probably impossible” carbon reductions would be needed to hold temperature rises below 2C (3.6F).
Then:
In the report, Growth Isn’t Possible, the authors looked at the main models for climate change and energy use in the global economy.
They then considered whether economic growth could be maintained while “retaining a good likelihood” of limiting the global average temperature to within 2C of pre-industrial levels.
The report concluded that a growth rate of just 3%, the “carbon intensity” of the global economy would need to fall by 95% by 2050 from 2002 levels. This would require an average annual reduction of 6.5%.
…
The findings also suggested that there was no proven technological advance that would allow “business as usual” to continue.
At least the BBC put in some of the “other side”:
Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market think-thank, said Nef’s report exhibited “a complete lack of understanding of economics and, indeed, human development”.
“It is precisely this economic growth which will lift the poor out of poverty and improve the environmental standards that really matter to people - like clean air and water - in the process, as it has done throughout human history,” he told BBC News.
“There’s only one good thing I can say for the Nef’s report, and that’s that it is honest. It’s authors admit that they want us to be poorer and to lead more restricted lives for the sake of their faddish beliefs.”