August 10, 2018

#17 Trump Can't Keep It Up (Economic Growth)

43 minutes

We should NOT be celebrating (or pursuing) 4.1% economic growth, according to co-host Dave Gardner. Listen to this podcast to find out why pursuing GDP growth today is suicidal. Also on tap, listener comments about Earth Overshoot Day (the subject of our last podcast), and more single-use plastics we want to avoid. Dave stumps us with this question: What single-use disposable item do we want to see used more widely? Try to guess before Dave gives you the answer halfway into this episode.

In this episode we hear U.S. President Donald Trump brag about economic growth at a 4.1% annualized rate. Even his sharpest critics celebrate robust growth, as we hear from Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe. Many economists responded to this news that they don't think we can keep that growth rate up, but their reasons differ from Dave's. On a finite planet, perpetual growth in economic throughput is impossible.

Here's the spreadsheet Dave discusses in this episode:

Forget an economy 1 million times the size of today's, do you think one planet Earth can support even twice today's level of resource extraction, energy use, and waste (including carbon) emissions?

Here's one of the GrowthBusters videos mentioned in which Dave gives away Endangered Species Condoms:

One of the Endangered Species Condoms packages courtesy of the Center for Biological Diversity:

Explore the relationship between economic growth and sustainability at these websites and books:

Economics in a Full World by Herman Daly in Scientific American

The Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Limits to Growth (1972 MIT Study)

Degrowth

Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train: Errant Economists, Shameful Spenders, and a Plan to Stop Them All

Supply Shock: Economic Growth at the Crossroads and the Steady State Solution

Enough Is Enough: Building a Sustainable Economy in a World of Finite Resources