We are surrounded by stuff. We buy and buy and buy - it’s the foundation of how our economies run, how they grow. But all this buying, all this economic “growing”, is devastating people and our planet. In the third episode of All Hail The Planet - a series delving into the social, economic and political forces undermining meaningful global action on climate change - Ali Rae speaks with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, economic sociologist Juliet Schor, and development economist Ndongo Samba Sylla.

Our obsession with economic growth is deadly | All Hail The Planet - YouTube

@Denny I’ve always thought that there is a problem with the concept of economic growth. Simply because I am not aware of anything in the known universe that grows forever. All that comes into being, declines and ends. Ironically, that, it seems to me, is the healthy way of things. So the idea that human beings can create something that will grow forever and be an indication of good health, has just felt wrong to me.

@crossingthethreshold Agree, and although I don’t think it will, maybe the universe itself is the only thing that grows forever.

@crossingthethreshold aaahh yes .. and definitely not to detract from @Denny ‘s point 💯isn’t the point to ride the wave of a handful of companies to THEIR top … sell .. buy into the next wave … ride to the top and sell .. buy into ..etc?

So there is theoretically infinite growth for a handful of people that do that repeatedly .. across generations and blow the rest fuse.. we are just part of the dream.

@JohnPhilpin @odd @crossingthethreshold Yeah, I mean, the Earth and solar system have a definite end date, so, there's that. In the scheme of things the Universe has no care about whether a species known as Homo sapiens exists on a planet called earth. For our own sake it is perhaps sad that we are only sort of intelligent, certainly not wise, in terms of our ability to plan for our future survival.

My assumption/guess is that we've done enough damage already or that we're close and not on a trajectory to change fast enough, that the result will be disruptive to to the point that we have a planetary-wide extinction event of an untold number of species and that we're not likely to be one that survives. 200 years or less? I assume it's already started but we're just in the first years.

Perhaps it was inevitable? Perhaps our species, for all of its "intelligence" is not capable of the kind of social organization needed for long term survival. I've come to think of Homo sapiens as a very clever, semi-intelligent primate. But still a primate and still only partially capable of advanced thought.

Even the dinosaurs with their relatively tiny brains lived for many millions of years. It would seem they were better suited for survival.

@Denny yes and it depends how far your science fiction mind wants to take you.

@Denny I think to equate “the dinosaurs” with Homo sapiens is an error. I could argue that “the primates” have already been around a good long while.

@jeremycherfas True but my point is that Homo sapiens, as a particular kind of primate that seems to think of itself as "intelligent" may not last as long as other species that we think of as being less intelligent. My point being that we humans seem to think of our selves as advanced and it's true to a point. Certainly in terms of technology, social organization and many measures. And we tend to view other species as less intelligent or less capable. And yet were we to look at the duration of existence of many other "simpler" organisms that have existed, many will have outlasted us. In other words, our advanced intelligence seems likely to have led us to a shorter span of existence on the planet. And in this context, we'll have proven to be less successful than other species at surviving.

@Denny I understand your points, and as a biologist I can only reply that humanity’s foolish delusions are neither here nor there. I commend Rob Foley’s book Just Another Unique Species.

@crossingthethreshold Jason Hickel has written a good book on the topic of "degrowth" which can help giving perspective to that topic Less is More, I found it eye opening.

@Denny, thanks for sharing.