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Economic Growth 'Cannot Continue'
Continuing global economic growth "is not possible" if nations are to tackle climate change, a report by an environmental think-tank has warned.
The findings in the report also suggested that there was no proven technological advance that would allow "business as usual" to continue. (photo credit: D Sharon Pruitt, via flickr user Pink Sherbet Photography) The New Economics Foundation (NEF)
said "unprecedented and probably impossible" carbon reductions would be
needed to hold temperature rises below 2C (3.6F).
Scientists say exceeding this limit could lead to dangerous global warming.
"We urgently need to change our economy to live within its environmental budget," said NEF's policy director.
Andrew Simms added: "There is no global, environmental central bank to bail us out if we become ecologically bankrupt."
None of the existing models or policies could "square the circle" of economic growth with climate safety, NEF added.
'No magic bullets'
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%.
However, the authors said that the world's carbon intensity had "flatlined" between 2000 and 2007.
"For each year the target was missed, the necessary improvements would grow higher still," they observed.
The findings also suggested that there was no proven technological advance that would allow "business as usual" to continue.
"Magic bullets - such as carbon capture and storage, nuclear or even geo-engineering - are potentially dangerous distractions from more human-scale solutions," said co-author Victoria Johnson, NEF's lead researcher for the climate change and energy programme.
She added that there was growing support for community-scale projects, such as decentralised energy systems, but support from governments was needed.
"At the moment, magic bullets... are getting much of the funding and political attention, but are missing the targets," Dr Johnson said.
"Our research shows that to prevent runaway climate change, this needs to change."
The report concluded that an economy that respected environmental thresholds, which include biodiversity and the finite availability of natural resources, would be better placed to deliver human well-being in the long run.
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. Its authors admit that they want us to be poorer and to lead more restricted lives for the sake of their faddish beliefs."
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110 Comments so far
Show All"Economic Growth 'Cannot Continue'"
Now there's a new thought...
When I was in college forty years ago Zero Population Growth (ZPG) and Appropriate Technology (assessing social costs and benefits of specific technologies)were movements gaining momentum. There was even an Appropriate Technology Club on campus.
By 1980 the mere mention of ZPG or appropriate technology resulted in blank stares or questioning my patriotism.
Since then, unlimited growth at any cost has been America's mantra.
Ah, but just about every economist would disagree with that obvious line of reasoning. Just like they think that resources are endless on a finite planet. It is amazing how and advanced college education can cause its students to loose all understanding of reality.
I may have a "loose ... understanding of reality." But I have yet to lose it.
Pathologists make slides of metastasizing cancers using stains to make the spreading cancers stand out. Photos from space of post WWll cities look exactly like metastasizing cancers. Not "similar" but EXACTLY. One sees road systems with major roads giving rise to offshoots, the offshoots giving rise to yet other offshoots, and so on.
interesting...
What you are observing - "sprawl" and "overdevelopment" is largely due to the population of automobiles not humans. Cars have the physical and ecological footprint of 20 humans. Get rid of cars, and return to compact walkable communities and most of that sprawl would be gone.
Only to a certain degree. Despite an advent of carfree living and mass transit, you cannot continue to increase population densities in a given urban area without causing negative impacts to the surrounding areas, as well as causing problems for the people living within the more densely populated areas. As a city, neighborhood or town grows more dense, people naturally want to expand outward, and pressure is put on governments to allow expansion.
No urban area exists in a vacuum away from the habitats and natural systems surrounding it, and thus spillover of human impacts onto those habitats and natural systems is inevitable, regardless of and because of increased densities. There is no such thing as a "carbon-neutral" or impact-free person, any more than there is such thing as a "carbon-neutral" deer or bear. Quality of life and the environment outside the urban area also decrease as a result of increased populations making temporary, but habitual excursions into the rural and wilderness areas.
Oh, that's right: The Club of Rome think-thanks(!) report "Limits to Growth" is almost 40 years old.
>> "a complete lack of understanding of economics and, indeed, human development".
O.K. bright guy, explain how the planet can handle the human population doubling one or two more times. I'm listening...
It's annoying that the BBC finished the article with that smarmy attack and not a rebuttal from Nef.
The guy obviously doesn't understand Adam Smith, let alone how an economy can exist at all without the natural resources from which all goods and service derive.
Mohandas Gandhi.
"... there [is] growing support for community-scale projects, such as decentralised energy systems, but support from governments was needed."
I'd say removal of Corporate and Goverments' resistance to decentralised energy systems is what's needed. People all around can and want to establish "decentralised energy systems". But the centralized energy systems are what controls people, limiting us to consumer choices over innovative choices and free expression of our cooperative life-force.
Artificial scarcity of energy sources that in addition are environmentally destructive - like oil, gas, coal and nuclear - opens US up to exploitation and keeps our thinking limited to distress and narrow lanes of possibilities.
When growth, competition and everyone always being number one ("not accept second place") are the main goals lauded - like in the State of the Union address - and success is measured in external growth rather than in harmonic proportions sustaining inner and outer equilibrium, then exploitation of people and planet must prevail over happiness and general welfare.
The sixth extinction will not be televised.
If we continue to believe that the old economic model will lift people out of poverty; there will then be more and more people taking jobs in the military who then have to fight wars making all of the world a poorer place to live.
Tom Engelhardt explains it well-
"Until the Pentagon is forced into our financial universe, the angry, impatient one where most Americans now live, we're in trouble. Until candidates begin losing because angry Americans reject our perpetual wars, and the perpetual war-planning that goes with them,
this sort of thinking will simply continue, no matter who the "commander-in-chief" is or what he thinks he's commanding.
It's time for Americans to stop saluting and end the Pentagon's free ride before America's wars kill us."
Can the perpetual Economic Growth model be stopped before the Wars are stopped?
I don't think so as one depends on the other. Stop the Wars and all things all possible.
Global Start Date: September 22, 2012...acoustic, agrarian living...unanimous, global rejection of industry, electricity and property rights...local governance and defence...personal daily involvement in one's own sustenance...
let's get those gardens growing...we're gonna need food...and water...hope that environment hangs together through it...
And this is why the so called "progressive" community should rethink it's "Brand"--where did it come from anyway? Time to rethink your own agenda and fundamental principles: is capitalism sustainable and must your beloved "democracy" be predicated upon it? The right wing has chosen "freedom" predicated on "personal responsibility" as if communal responsibility had no basis in reality, meaning that Life is not an interconnection of all beings so that if everyone were equally selfish somehow all will turn out splendidly. Has it?
Some parts of the globe will get unbearably hot during the summer; some parts will get unbearably cold during the winter. That's not global warming, that's global climate change. It's happened before and it is happening again. Mankind will survive as it always has. That's the tragedy.
"Mankind will survive as it always has."
Is that because mankind is "different" or "blessed" and therefore immune to what other species face, namely extinction?
I don't think mankind is immune to extinction, in fact I think even the wealthiest will starve with the rest if conditions get bad enough.
Even if they shoot people into space, they will end up killing each other after a few years having to live in isolation!
like the dinosaurs--were they too big to fail?
"Mankind will survive as it always has."
Our species, at 200,000 years of age is one of the youngest species on the planet. Neanderthal man and Homo erectus survived for a much longer period of time. Where are they now? Extinct.
The looming genetic bottleneck of our population crash makes our extinction, as a random event, more likely.
But it sure is comforting to make the unsupported assertion "Mankind will survive as it always has."
Since i was very young, i've believed that the greatest skill humans have, is fooling ourselves. This can be a useful short-term skill for specific purposes, but it is not a great long-term skill for planetary health - or for human survival.
There is also the element of learning that actions have consequences. It is part of the basic education of every infant. Any child who doesn't learn it will probably not survive long. The same goes for societies, and many societies have *not* learned it and have not survived. But now we are discussing it on a global scale.
"Economic Growth Cannot Continue"
Yep. Every few decades the word gets out. Trouble is, we are now living in a Friedmanesque world gone mad, and the political environment is less amenable than ever to scaling down. (Isn't it strange that "economic growth cannot continue" is a concept that has kind of a dim revelatory ring every time it is announced, no matter how many times? And humans are supposed to be intelligent?)
We are on our own. We can't look for government enlightenment. We have to build a sustainable society *despite* the corporate/military/government complex and we can't allow ourselves to say that it can't be done.
Yes. www.transitionus.org.
‘Die-Off’ of Hundreds of Millions Is U.S. Plan to ‘Save’ Earth, by Steve Homan at http://dons-review-law-politics-science-philosophy.com/politics
Millions expected Barack Obama to be the world’s savior when he was inaugurated in January 2009. Millions expected him to stop the wars in Iraq and quickly finish the war in Afghanistan. Millions expected him to solve the Great Recession with a massive “green jobs” program. All this within his first 100 days in office, ala FDR during the Great Depression.
But those things are not part of the plan.
The “powers-that-be,” which include Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and, above all, the Cheney task force (the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group), and now the well-meaning, but corporate-funded and -staffed, Obama administration ALREADY have a plan for solving the crises, and ALREADY have begun implementing it.
It’s called the “Great Die-Off.” The elites who have been stripping the carcass of the middle and lower classes since Saint Reagan in 1980 are now going to let the rest die by the millions in the U.S. and the hundeds of millions worldwide until this little planet again can support whoever remains. The planet and laws of physics do not compromise. They will force an economic paradigm change from constant, infinite growth to a no-growth, status-quo economy within the next 10-20 years.
In 2005, a Goldman Sachs report said, “Ultimately, we agree that the energy bull market will roll over once ‘demand destruction’ really begins. We simply do not believe we have arrived at that point.” Perhaps, they await the results of America’s oil grabs in Iraq and Afghanistan (which manifests mainly in its natural gas pipelines connecting Europe to Russia). The plan began with deregulation of banks in the 1990s, the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the transferral of money from the common taxpayer to the big banks in 2009. It continues with more media mergers pending, the establishment of “NorthComm,” a U.S. military base in America designed to squelch terrorists AND U.S. protestors, and the tightening of American bases worldwide in preparation for resource wars.
Why did Obama bring so many Goldman Sachs and Citigroup mates to his staff? With a smart guy like Obama, you know that there’s a plan and that he either has signed on to it as the most reasonable plan or someone is holding a gun to his head.
Michael C. Ruppert in “Confronting the Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post-Peak Oil World” (Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, Vt., 2009) lays bare the answer I had suspected. I believe Ruppert because his book describes one of very few logical reasons for Obama’s lack of action. Ruppert’s book was made into a documentary called “CoLLapse,” which has played in movie theaters around the U.S. since late fall.
Now, the age of oil and natural gas is ending. Any deniers are prolonging the agony. All alternate energy sources will not maintain the lifestyle that oil and natural gas have given us.
Ruppert tells us this that calamity, including the deaths of millions in the U.S. and hundreds of millions around the world, is coming because of our “greed is good” mentality and the ongoing hype of the sales pitch called “the American Dream” since Saint Reagan took over for Carter in 1981. There is no magic cure when carbon-based fuel (mostly oil and natural gas) run out and only a handful of common people understand that. No elite or corporate pigs are going to let us know for fear of panic hoarding of oil. Within 10-20 years we face a forced localization of resources away from globalization towards community markets for food, energy, housing, water—everything. With the amount of denial in the air, Ruppert fears that the transition, which should have begun 30 years ago, could reach the horror of the French Revolution. Near the end of his book he says that necessary steps have been taken so slowly that he fears the survivors will not be able to function because of the lost infrastructure and extreme grief.
Humans have evolved into the dominant species on the planet. Unfortunately, they have embarked on a suicidal lifestyle based on a misguided paradigm that the economy must always grow. NO economic recovery (i.e., growth) is possible without using more energy. And there is NO combination of alternative energies anywhere—now or in the future—that will sustain the population, lifestyle, and infrastructure built by oil and fossil fuels.
“Simply put,” Ruppert writes, “more money can be made—more quickly—by accelerating the decline, bankrupting the country, starving people, and selling off assets than by investing it in rebuilding under a new economic paradigm or by trying to soften the crash. The destruction of economies will also destroy demand for energy. ‘Demand destruction’ has lowered prices which have made it unprofitable to invest in alternative energies. This is the path chosen and advocated by investment houses like Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and influential think tanks.”
Thus, the plan to garrison the world with U.S. bases, most recently in Iraq, to assure a certain amount of oil and gas reaches the U.S.“Those hoping that an economic recovery is possible must remember that NO economic recovery is possible EVEN CLOSE to where we were in early 2008 without driving oil consumption back up to where it was then. Contrast that with a [consensus] 9 percent decline rate. The numbers just don’t balance,” Ruppert says.
The Alternative Energy Structure……does NOT exist.Please watch in “Don’s Review” for more on Ruppert’s book and on Norway’s crash program for a post-oil world.
Hundreds of millions would not be enough. World population has overshot sustainability by at least 50% (seat-of-the-pants calculation), and every day the overshoot continues, the resource base declines. CO2 overload is only one element among many.
I'm not advocating that we let half the world's population "die off;" there are right ways to deal with the crisis. But they aren't happening, so I'm actually just predicting that the dieoff will occur. It's something I'd rather not think about too much - gee, thanks for bringing it up.
On the other hand: without checking your sources (I don't see any links, do I?), I don't believe that our Masters of the Universe have any such long-term plan. Granted they're ruthless enough, I don't think they're far-sighted enough. And I don't think they care past the ends of their personal bank accounts.
Yes, that includes their flunkies in government. When you're a hired goon for Gold Sacks, you don't think too far ahead. That might be very unpleasant.
In other words, I think pure unmitigated, largely unthinking greed is more than adequate to explain our predicament. But I also think you're right about the die-off, except for the scale. But there's no need for anyone to plan it. What would require planning is a soft landing.
Hold onto your hat and fasten your seat belts. No soft landing for YOU.
Important points from all of the above from Drosera on down. The ideas conveyed by Ruppert have been discussed in the Peak Oil community for 5 years, and are fairly well known. Yes, I am sure the super-rich elites have their Plan.
And, Jay Hansen before and Hubert King before that and many others. Jay Hansen predicted the Iraqi invasion years before it happened. Why, because of oil, because the human species is nothing more than the totality of the genes that make us. We live to procreate and that is it; nothing more than yeast in a big f'king beer fermentation tank. We're all Kunstler's yeast people.
"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." This is a quote from a source above who rejects the thesis put forward in the article that growth is "impossible."
There is one way in which he is right. Forests are being cut down for fuel in many parts of the world and they do not grow back right away. Economic growth which focuses on providing the poor with solar and wind technology to provide them with energy (for cooking, among other things) cannot help but make things better. Certain kinds of heating systems--geothermal--will help people heat their homes while lessening their carbon footprint. Meetings conducted via the web reduce business travel, so certain web applications will actually improve things. A paperless office will result in fewer forests cut down. Mass ground transit will reduce jet fuel consumption. The upshot is, economic development can work to decrease greenhouse gases, not increase them. We need to be very careful when we make broad statements about the general harm caused by economic development.
I installed a custom piece of plywood in a trailer for someone yesterday.It was an oversize sheet of 5/4 very expensive $130.00 exterior grade.But the over packing was ridiculous.A massive hardwood pallet of (Luan) wrapped in cardboard and sandwiched between particle board and paneling before being strapped down.The whole package must have weighed 450 lbs and was delivered with a tilt bed truck without handling by hand at all.
I would guess that the pallet alone (tropical hardwood) could have been made into a crate to ship the plywood in ,or 3 more sheets of plywood.
There are so many examples of massive waste in our economy,if we just looked.We don't need growth,we need efficiency and sustainable development using conservation to create abundance out of waste.
A good example would be cartons and foil recycled into Solar Ovens so people could cook without charcoal or wood(Haiti) comes to mind.
peace
Third world countries have the smallest impact on global climate change.
The US & China have the greatest impact. The impact of the big polluters is why the third world forests take so long to regenerate. Corporate greed steals third world resources and poisons the land in the process, which contributes to water contamination.
"lift the poor out of poverty"? That is quite a pungent stench.
It just makes the rich get richer. The rich thrive on the poverty of others.
Let's lift greed out of third world countries and clean up the current filthy ways at home.
Drosera: perhaps we need to define our terms in order to clarify our premises such as wealth, poverty, growth. You will note that it is the Schumacher College that came out with this report : Economics as if people and the planet mattered. It is an outgrowth of the economic philosophy of E.F. Schumacher who wrote Small Is Beautiful published back in 1973. Aside from its chapter on coal, it still resonates today: we need to think in a small scale. And we must place first and center the rights of all life forms on this planet. The post about solar ovens is one example. Part of Africa have solved refrigeration by the use of large clay pots which require no electricity. But we must question much more of how we live outside of the ability of nature to sustain us indefinitely. Finally, it must be pointed out that this eminent economist, E.F. Schumacher, was influenced by Mahatma Ghandi. The writings of both are well worth reading as such concepts as wealth, poverty, growth and, I add, freedom are explored in the light of the inner life of humanity.
The article should read: Tom Clougherty, executive director of the Adam Smith Institute, a free-market DOESN'T THINK-TANK...? It certainly isn't a think-thank. Neither does it do well at thinking. No thanks.
Everything each of us does, impacts our global community.
Newton's third law of motion:
To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.
In such cases, "free-market" really means adolescent-ego mentality that wants to do whatever the hell it wants to do and doesnt want to accept responsibility for maintaining harmonious relationships with anything outside its ego-self. Fundamentalist capitalism - like all fundamentalisms - is an adolescent-brat way of life (death), and stupid to boot because it thinks the biosphere is a subset of the economy, instead of the other way around.
Well. At long last somebody is talking about the interlocked relationship between this manmade economy and the shift in environmental relationships. I have been thoroughly castigated for suggesting the same upto this point. Or as per common dreams just ignored. Continuous growth in living systems is an anomally. In human terms a malignancy, a cancer. The weather/climate may quite well be the least of our (human) concerns as the Earth adjusts to our our self pandering ways.
I'm sorry, but for too long we have been behaving badly towards our own true interest. The pursuit of comfort and security.
Humans in general, Americans in particular are quite immature and rather stupid people. Unwilling to give up their toys and play things for a life lived in conjunction with the Nature that made us, giving us life in the first place.
Our governance is truly broken down and incapable of needed action, so thus we are doomed.
I think the very least we can do is talk truth to each other in the manner of Howard Zinn, that would be a welcome change.
Someone suggested "humans will survive as we always have". Good god what incredilble ignorance we have in such a statement. The existance of humanity on Earth in terms of time is rather like a flashbulb in relationship to the span of a human life. Hardly consequential. Not a good reference to survival, surely.
Y'all have a good day.
"Well. At long last somebody is talking about the interlocked relationship between this manmade economy and the shift in environmental relationships. I have been thoroughly castigated for suggesting the same upto this point. Or as per common dreams just ignored."
On this website?! Views like the one you expressed above are quite...uh... common here and have been for years. The only people likely to "castigate" you are right-wing trolls.
"Well. At long last somebody is talking about the interlocked relationship between this manmade economy and the shift in environmental relationships. I have been thoroughly castigated for suggesting the same upto this point. Or as per common dreams just ignored."
On this website?! Views like the one you expressed above are quite...uh... common here and have been for years. The only people likely to "castigate" you are right-wing trolls.
God, I could see it when I was 10 years old! The phrase "contribution to society" somehow entered my head way back when and I had to ask my dad about it. My dad explained that when I got a job and started to pay taxes I would be making my "contribution to society."
In the community in which I lived, most people were employed in chemical factories and heavy industry. The horizon to the west that could be seen from my home was a wall of stacks belching smoke into the air. There was a permanent brown haze and the air smelled bad as well.
At the time I was also taught about the dangers of pollution and the damage it had already caused and I started to wonder about this "contribution to Society." How on earth could I be making a positive contribution when I would be causing so much damage? Where were the smart people who could fix this problem?
It was not long after that when I stopped caring about pollution. I became a motorhead and complained bitterly when they took the lead out of gasoline. "Oh my poor valves are going to recess into the head and I will have a big bill to pay..... Oh poor me.....damn those regulators....." My dad caught me regurgitating this nonsense to a friend one day, took me aside one night and told me what a fool I had become. He was right.
Humans are just the planet's case of ass cancer.
Greenhouse Gases will be the chemotherapy that finally cures us....if the Pentagon's ballistic radiation treatment doesnt to it first.
"Free market" cult members are so funny, aren't they?
There's either balance, or perpetual growth.
Ya can't have both.
In order to allow 'developing' nations to 'grow' to a comfortable economic level of human existence, we need to shrink the giant pool of wealth the One-Percenters are hoarding - and we also have to put a stop to the wealth hoarding.
What the 'free market' cult really wants, though, is perpetual 'growth' only for themselves, see. They could give a f**k about the billions of poor people on Earth, unless they can scrape together a few nickles and buy some Monsanto Zombie seeds, that is...
Balance is the only road we haven't tried, and the only one we have left...
I see another ice age coming. But, what worth this?
Mr. Clougherty, please continue, I do so love hearing idiots babble!
Jeevee
WHY WHY WHY do humans ignore the need for strict birth control???
Because the problem is economic growth, not population growth.
If you reply: "But economic growth is due to population growth!" you will have just shown your ignorance as to how capitlaist economics works. Capitalism-driven growth has nothing to do with populaiton growth, period. Halve the population, and the capitalists will simply find ways for the remaining population of consume 4 times more fossil fuel.
For exactly the same reasons, efficiency improvements and even schemes to capture and store a large portion of CO2 emissions, by themselves, are not very effective. Efficiency gains simply cause a drop in energy prices and more usage of the efficient, (and even older inefficient) devicees - the "Prius Effect".
What is needed is a complete restructuring of how we live so no one needs more energy consumption, regardless of market forces.
I agree that inequality of consumption and production are huge problems, but eventually any closed system reaches its carrying capacity based on sheer number of organisms. It is not unreasonable to see that we are showing signs of getting there.
Of course capitalists could care less. But I have also observed that old style critics of capitalism sometimes underestimate the need to take care of the natural world. They see calls for a clean environment as obstacles to production that is needed to improve living conditions. Look at the type of industrialization that took place / takes place in the former USSR and current China. Many of the lakes and rivers are ruined. Look at Chernobyl. And of course the wealthier in any system can retreat to pristine settings, but the poor must often stay where the toxins are worst, suffering birth defects etc.
And of course, the acidification and suffocation of the oceans by farm and industrial pollution is most serious, for everyone.
Reducing or controlling the resource greedy human population through voluntary family planning will take some of the stress off an earth that is bursting at the seams. In terms of consumption, one fewer US citizen is equal to something like 7 fewer people from India.
Joe
No, reducing users of the resource reduced demand of the resource, which reduced the price of the resource, which leads to a rebound in usage.
Capitalism requires ever increasing resource usage. This ever increasing growth has nothing to do with population growth, it has to do with the ever-resent requirement that a holder of capital get a return on his investment, allowing him to acquire more capital. It works the same on a planet with 7 million people as it does on a planet with 7 billion people. The only difference would be that the 7 million people would use 1000 time more resources each.
China is a capitalist country.
"No, reducing users of the resource reduced demand of the resource, which reduced the price of the resource, which leads to a rebound in usage."
This is economic determinism. It's bullshit!
People can decide to use less. People have ways (laws, taxes, social pressure) to prevent others from increasing their consumption to consume what they forgo. It becomes easier the more people who decide to conserve.
"It works the same on a planet with 7 million people as it does on a planet with 7 billion people. The only difference would be that the 7 million people would use 1000 time more resources each."
Why didn't they when there were fewer people then? When I was born the population was one-third what it is today. We didn't consume the same amount of resources. In fact, per capita resource consumption in the U.S. was much less than today so total consumption was less than one-third of today's.
"China is a capitalist country."
What you decide to call China is irrevelant. They have pledged to combat Climate Change and there is no reason to doubt that they will honor that pledge if we do our part. They proved to be very serious about population control.
What is the "Pris Effect"; are you referring to Jevons Paradox? Of course economic AND population growth are determential to the planet. Look at Haiti or better yet look at Easter Island, for god's sake.