Without Technological Advancement, How Can a Nation Achieve Economic Growth?

Economic growth and sustainability – are they mutually exclusive?

Hitting a balance between unbounded economic growth and sustainability requires a new mindset

Past Karen L. Higgins, PhD     Posted on sixteen May 2013

Nearly 90 years agone in his 1926 book The Biosphere , Russian biogeologist Vladimir Vernadsky was first to recognize implications of the interdependence between life and the earth's structure. His eureka may take seemed prosaic to indigenous peoples, whose survival was closely linked to the earth.

However, in present-twenty-four hours society, although we recognize our dependence on the world'southward resource – its water, oxygen and other natural elements – mayhap we practise not recognize the connectedness between the economic system and the earth. Perhaps the profundity of such interdependence has been buried past our search for happiness through materialism and economic growth; or possibly we would not know what to practise if our nations failed to attain higher GDP and our businesses did not make a profit. How so could we flourish as individuals?

Voices of sustainability rising toward a crescendo

The significance of this long recognized simply superficially embraced interdependence is that there are limits to Earth'due south natural resources and thus to any economic growth that depends on them – limits that, if non honored, will gravely affect the future. The anxiety is mounting about our ability to accomplish sustainability, that is, our ability to meet our needs while ensuring that future generations will be able to run into their needs.

Over the by xl years, what began as a simple concern for the surroundings has matured into a widespread anticipation that is causing people from authorities to private enterprise to accept activity. In 1972, members of the Club of Rome – a group of thinkers in politics, business and science – published agonizing scenarios suggesting that unbounded growth of population, pollution and depletion of natural resources would cause the collapse of physical growth on globe.

In 1983, world leaders established the Brundtland Commission to focus on overlapping areas of sustaining life on World: economy, surroundings and society.

In the last decade, more voices take joined the choir, enriching our agreement of the interdependence between the economy and the sustainability of guild and environment. These new voices add volume and harmony to the chorus, suggesting that we seek alternatives to economic growth maybe by measuring well-existence in terms other than GDP or turn a profit.

Limitless economical growth counters sustainability

This simplistic diagram illustrates the interdependence among the growth (reinforcing) loops of consumption, the economy and resource depletion. Material desires instigate purchases intended to bolster significance which fosters more materialism; purchases increase Gdp which creates jobs and fiscal well-existence and facilitates more purchases; more production to raise Gdp using carbon-based resources also depletes those resources. This interdependence has locked society into what psychologists phone call a social trap, i.eastward., pursuit of short-term private gains which leads to a loss for the grouping as a whole in the long run. (Source: Karen Higgins, PhD, and her book Fiscal Whirlpools, Elsevier, 2013)[/explanation]

In its simplest grade, we can picture economical growth as a reinforcing loop, to use a term from systems thinking; that is, growth sustains growth like a snowball collects more layers as is rolls down a snowy hillside.

In the short term, the benefits of economical growth are many: the more that businesses and nations abound and profit, the more than individuals have jobs, resources and quality of life. At this point in human history, technology has enabled miraculous products, global travel, rapid communication, amazing efficiencies and unimagined leisure. Economic growth derived from all these technological marvels does indeed feed on itself, equally consumers demand more and more than.

Yet in order to grow, the economy also feeds on natural resources and emits waste that pollutes the air and threatens the delicate climate on which life relies. Behind the scenes are other reinforcing loops created past the unlimited use of natural resources such as oil and gas that facilitate economic growth and by technological advances that extract the terminal dregs of energy from the world. These counterbalancing forces undermine the foundation upon which economic growth is built and, over the long term, create a sinkhole which will consume up the economy, environs and society. Furthermore, nosotros now alive with the toxic byproducts of carbon-based resources. Notables such as Pulitzer Prize-winning geography professor Jared Diamond in his 2005 work Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Bill McKibben in his 2022 volume eaarth , and former US Vice President Al Gore in his 2022 book The Future: Vi Drivers of Global Alter make a compelling case for global warming and climate change acquired past CO₂ and other chemic emissions from carefree apply of carbon energy.

This chart shows a snapshot of world growth trends for representative parameters: Economic system, CO2 emissions, oil consumption and production, and population.While population is doubling about every 43 years, the trend for CO2 (one of the primary greenhouse gases in global warming) is on a steeper path. From 2000 to 2010 its rate of increase was over 2½ times what information technology was between 1990 and 2000. The chart also indicates an acceleration of world Gross domestic product, reflective of escalating consumption and growing dependence on economic growth. Oil consumption and production are stand-ins for all carbon-based free energy consumption and production. Although they do not give a complete picture (which would include other carbon-based sources such as coal and natural gas, also as alternative energy and free energy reserves), this representation intends to draw the trend for continuing growth of consumption and the similar or slowing rate of production for carbon-based sources. (Sources: Gross domestic product information: Imf, The World Economic Outlook Database. Population data: US Demography Bureau, Total Midyear Population for the World,1950-2050. Oil consumption, production and CO2 emissions: BP Statistical Review of World Free energy, 2012. Information normalized to fit the same scale.)

Thus our continued emphasis on the economic growth we know today is diametrically opposed to sustainability of our planet. Although there has been progress in developing culling free energy sources to wean us from carbon-based energy, it is time, many say, to bring an stop to growth, to rethink our priorities, to conserve, to reinvent. Companies, individuals and nations are beginning to recognize the urgency; however, the real effect is whether nosotros can abound our economic system and sustain our planet — or whether these two are mutually exclusive. Tin can we have both? Or, alternatively, tin can nosotros substitute something else in place of unbounded economic growth?

How to restore residuum

To address the paradox between economic growth and sustainability, we must find a way to residuum the ii and allow them to coexist. This balance may be possible not only by developing alternative energy sources merely by and large by dramatically containing the growth spirals of economy, population and depletion of resources, reducing them to a state of near stasis.

Effects of these deportment would certainly bear upon standard of living for many nations and impose restrictions on energy use, emissions and population growth across the globe. This balancing human activity must too be accompanied by a deep understanding that the nature of the problem is the tension between short-term growth and long-term survival.

To respond the question of substitution for economical growth, nosotros must bring human psychology into the picture. In his insightful 1973 book The Denial of Death, which won the Pulitzer Prize, renowned cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker succinctly described the most basic human need that "expresses the heart of the beast: the desire to stand up out, to exist the 1 in cosmos."

Economic growth non only depends on employ of energy resources but likewise on the striving to stand up out. In today's world, consumerism is rooted in this deep human need for significance – more than things impart more importance to the private in the optics of self and others.

This phenomenon creates notwithstanding another reinforcing loop. When consumerism fails to satiate this demand, it does non just evaporate. Instead, it further amplifies the buying of products and services that fuel economic growth.

The Brundtland Report of 1987 defines sustainable as "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." The written report describes three mutually dependent, interrelated areas of sustainability: economy, environs, and order. A change in whatever one area will somehow disturb the other two, thus their furnishings overlap. For instance, economic growth requires non-renewable natural resources and produces harmful emissions which affect both surround and social well-being. (Sources: Brundtland, H., Our Mutual Futurity, Oxford University Press, 1987. Overlapping circles of sustainability defined at World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov 2004. IUCN Programme 2005-2008: Many Voices, One Earth)

But suppose we could translate the consumerism that stimulates economical growth into another way to reach significance. Suppose we had a meaningful purpose to which we could commit eye and soul. Such a purpose would not simply allow us to gracefully reduce our dependence on economic growth but would fill a void in our lives and make u.s. truly "stand out," leaving our footprints in the sand of time. What if this purpose were to ensure the survival — and flourishing — of future generations?

This idealistic solution could work by turning our cultures upside-downward and nudging human nature away from materialistic solutions to human longings. Merely given homo nature, how can we convince people to sacrifice for what some of the states may never run across? Betting our children'due south future entirely on altruism is unrealistic at best.

Unstimulated past urgent circumstances whose furnishings are timely and directly, unselfish concern for others frequently rests in the under regions of human motivation. How can nosotros be more than realistic? Tin can we align cocky-interest in the here-and-at present with actions that also back up the hereafter? Tin we, for instance, reframe the result to emphasize the immediate materialistic benefits of survivability?

Perhaps a balance lies in stimulating our competitive natures and search for significance to build heating and ac systems that don't rely on non-renewable resources, to create innovative holodecks that replace sea cruises, or to invent the most efficient applied science to eliminate harmful car emissions.

Such products would surely have a profitable market while bringing favorable attention to those involved, thus fulfilling both the human desire for significance and the need to sustain our globe for future generations.

Whichever path nosotros take, the first footstep to achieving any sort of balance between economical growth and sustainability is to put more weight on sustainability and less on economic growth.  We must end procrastinating, finish pushing the problem to the side by side generation so to the next, for we are at the finish of that path.

In their lifetimes, our children will already face the repercussions of this habitual postponement of messy solutions. Nosotros must rethink our halfway measures of recycling and dipping only our toes into alternative energy development. We must recognize the urgency and act.

In the end, we must each accept personal accountability for enriching our legacy and ask ourselves: "What can I do to help our world rely less on a level of economic growth that harms the environment and club, and encourage a path toward sustainability?"

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The Writer

Dr. Karen Higgins is an offshoot professor of management at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito School of Management, Claremont Graduate University in California, where she teaches Projection Management, Upstanding Leadership, and Systems Thinking. She is founder and president of the management consulting business Élan Leadership Concepts.

Previously during her career with the Naval Air Warfare Eye Weapons Sectionalization in People's republic of china Lake, California, she held various engineering and management positions, including project director for the Sidewinder missile. She was a member of the United states Navy's Senior Executive Service and held the top civilian position of Executive Director and Director for Research and Technology. She has received numerous awards, including the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Award, President Rank Award, and Office of the Secretarial assistant of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service.

In 2012, she was inducted into the Academy of Engineers at the University of Idaho, She holds a BS in mathematics, an MS in electrical technology and an MBA and PhD in executive direction.

Dr. Higgins is author of the newly published Elsevier book Financial Whirlpools: A Systems Story of the Peachy Global Recession. In the book, she uses systems thinking to draw interdependent causes and effects during the global financial crunch and to identify areas where preventative actions would take been most effective. She is currently working on an article chosen "Addicted to Growth," which illustrates interactions betwixt economical growth and economical, environmental and societal sustainability and proposes remedial actions.

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Source: https://www.elsevier.com/connect/economic-growth-and-sustainability-are-they-mutually-exclusive

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