Interesting that the name of

Interesting that the name of Prof Herman Daly of Zero Growth is not mentioned.

My "Principle for the Application of Physical Efficiency to Economics" has been copyrighted in 1991 to establish the date, not for monetary purposes. I was on the same list with Bill Rees 10-12 years ago and he agreed with it.

The problem is that all economic theories in history have been based on faith based fraud. The present "neoclassical market economy" garbage, taught in our universities as a science has become the biggest crime wave, destroying more lives and environment than any other before in history.

There's no such thing as "monetary efficiency", GDP etc. they're all fraudulent
theories as they try to overrule long known
physical laws and realities, like the laws of physical efficiency of "doing the most with less", thermodynamics, reactions, speed.

The main cause for this rape is the deregulated money creation by banks, not only licencing, but absolutely demanding more waste and destruction for the conversion of non existing, imaginary money into realities to maintain the obscenely inflated value of fraudulent nothing, created from the air.

Until this fraud is stopped and physical efficiency is introduced into real economic calculations, there's no hope for any improvement and the world will be going downhill into self destruction at an accelerated pace.

Today's so called "economics" are not a science, but a pseudo religion for the promotion of ruling classes, as all religions before in history, and our so called "economists" are nothing more than a priesthood, selling BS to enslave and ruin humanity and the world. With our esteemed PM as their archbishop.

Like the priests who are encouraging suicide bombers to blow themselves up and kill as many "infidels" as they can, to earn fast passage to the 7th level of heaven.

Ed Deak.

Outstanding Essay

Like so many problems facing industrial capitalism, the logic behind the issue is simple. The only question remains, will the 1% get out of the way of the majority citizens who are willing to save ourselves.

Georgescu-Roegen states what appears to be unassailable:

"The economics of infinite growth would be subject to the limitations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics; every time energy from coal, oil, wood or other sources was burned to run an industrial process, the entropy induced would yield a portion of that energy useless to the economy. As the process of exponential economic growth continued, it would face depleted energy availability on a finite planet, causing economies to fail."

This was an excellent article (and Ed Deak's comments are always worth reading).

Stability or Sustainability better than Degrowth or Work Less

Some of the goals sound good but Degrowth and Work Less both sound scary to voters who are worried about shrinking incomes and rising unemployment.

Semantics are important in a democracy.

Stability and Sustainability are more reassuring terms that could carry the Degrowth message further.

Seth Klein and the CCPA make good sense sometimes. Klein is absolutely right that with the right policies in place, economic growth can occur side-by-side with decreasing ecological footprints.

But it's a pipe dream to think any of this will ever happen unless we transition to a true cost system with all currently externalized costs internalized into retail prices and generous mid to low income rebates provided for those who are adversely affected by the economic restructuring.

We're already seeing a little of that with recycling fees for electronic gadgets added to the upfront retail cost instead of being covered by municipal property taxes. Under the old system, lower income people who buy little in the way of new electronic gadgets and carefully recycle those they do buy paid the same municipal property taxes as rich people who constantly buy and discard massive amounts of electronic gadgets.

It's a shame the NDP doesn't pay more attention to CCPA ideas instead of letting Bill Vander Zalm dictate NDP policy. Under Vander Zalm's leadership, the NDP has been inclined to label as a "tax grab" any attempt to make rich wastrels pay the true costs they have thus far externalized while reducing taxes on those who try to reduce their ecological footprint.

The green fairy tale

Finally someone is calling the 'greenest' city promises for what it is: greenwash.

Where is it written that life will be "fair"?

""Currently, the average Vancouverite's impact is three times larger than his or her fair allocation of global carrying capacity. We are a livable city because we offload our ecological footprint on the rest of the planet, leaving us with clear air, water and a wonderful place to live." "

And, just who the hell decides what fair is?

Very soon we will be doing

Very soon we will be doing with less, either in an orderly and voluntary process, working together; or by "other means"
To quote Mark Carney "(The process) could be long and orderly or it could be sharp and chaotic"

Frances: my money is on the sharp and chaotic way

You know; war. It is like a tradition with people when resources become scarce. At some point, it is inevitable, really. This world ain't big enough for seven billion people, never mind nine billion.

Going beyond Denial

It's wildly audacious to start up a municipal party based on limits to growth. I certainly admire their chutzpa for doing it. Of course they will not get elected. I think the idea is to raise awareness.

As Ed Deak never tires of saying, Economists are Frauds for pushing the idea of infinite growth. The rest of us are in deep denial. Please check out Naomi Klein's article: "Capitalism vs. Climate" at thenation.com .

Klein argues that the global warming denialists have got one thing right. The capitalist system is not compatable with global warming, because preventing it or even just adapting to it implies massive economic and political change away from a market dominated society.

This is not politically popular thing to say for people in the political center. But it is something that needs to be said. We need to rebuild our political and economic systems so that power is not concentrated with corporations and the rich, and so that we aren't raping the Earth to wring one more consumer product out of the system.

The only way to do this is for our economies to stop growing; Reverse the course of economic globalization; Develop economies on a local scale.

The only way we can become more sustainable is to become more locally resilient, more able to survive the coming economic shocks of peak oil and severe economic instability. That means we need to develop the opposite of the "head for the hills approach": We need to build social networks of people involved in community gardens, Locally owned and operated renewable energy, local alternative currencies, municipal planning for a world of higher oil prices and decreasing fossil fuel use. And time's awasting. we certainly can't wait for government to get on board. The people can lead right now with this initiative.

As Philip Smith, and Manfred Max-Neef point out in their excellent book - Economics Unmasked - no growth doesn't mean no development. If we think about development as something that happens to humans rather than to things, it becomes obvious that humans can keep developing without producing more stuff.

Cycling Commuter

Good thoughts and comments, Cycling Commuter.
Good and interesting article. Thanks.

degrowth is happening

If today’s youth, including adolescent developing nations, think they will enjoy the extravagent developed-world lifestyles on parade in today’s mass media, they will be disappointed. That lifestyle is a product of the energy obtained from cheap liquid crude. The supply of crude (along with essential non-renewable resources) with an EROEI that will allow economic growth to continue along a path of exponential rise has peaked. No alternative energy source can sustain society at it’s present level of growth and energy use.

This won’t sit well with the Degrowth folks or those that sit in protest decrying environmental destruction all the while expecting they can avoid a decrease in comort and lifestyle.

"People are beholden to the existing system” because they’re “generally not willing to accept economic changes to establish a sustainable society unless they can be assured of more security.”

We can focus on the laws of physics and supply and demand, and how ignoring those laws takes us to an inescapable ending, but living life according to the laws of the universe requires more than knowing basic formulae and the fact there are limits to growth. We need to understand more than the fact our global crises are products of fraudulent economic theories. Ultimately we must understand our world view is a product of the way we are trained to think. We need to understand the evolutionary forces that shape our thoughts.

Despite the pain and suffering we see in ongoing civil unrest in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Eurozone, the unpleasant odour carried by the winds of change is just a whiff of the birth of degrowth. The shit hasn’t hit the fan, yet.

Schmidt is partly right, degrowth is happening; but we won’t be overjoyed.

Degrowth; Detroit is leading the way

Look at the numbers; a city built for 2 million people with less than 1 million today. Look at the buildings; the Packard plant was the largest covered buildinge on Earth and now it is the largest abandoned site, aside from the town of Pripchat near Chernobyl.

There are indeed two ways to do it. Unstructured abandonment is ugly. The old buildings need to be torn apart and the mnaterials recycled. The land needs to be restored to a useful condition, not left to lie useless for centuries. That was OK for the Acropolis, but there were fewer than a million people in Ancient Greece, not seven billion.

Nora Farmer must think she is a college professor, demanding proof. That is such a cynical trick, it isn't worth the time it takes. The AGW deniers should prove they are right before their rights are taken away.

In abotu 20 years, the young folk will take over and they won't be offering proof to the Nora's, they will be putting them out to grow rice in the fields, where they belong.

no limits nada gateway to china

from the airport 'burb of richmond it is evident that the floodgates are wide open to mass immigration from asia, and china in particular. result is massive inflation of housing prices, severe pressure on blue collar trades working people, and endlessly more traffic: high end euro mobiles the new sacred cow...yes sir the greatest place on earth!! ps check out the massive new port infrastructure and roadways and bridges undergoing completion in delta, red carpet to china.

Keep dreaming!

One good point: this is not a local matter!
Nor Provincial; If anything a federal government could stop the manufacture and sale of goods that really have no place amongst sensible people.
Now, Who is going to tell women that cosmetics are no longer available?
Or guys that there are no more 500 horsepower trucks to be had?

The first thing to go should be advertising and store promotions!

Next, we must find another way for the citizens to spend their spare-time instead of cruising the shopping malls!

Good luck!

the good life...

"This is really more about redefining our understanding of the good life. Material consumption and overconsumption leaves a lot of us cold."

There is quite a bit packed into that innocuous sentence that might be overlooked. First and foremost, we wish to structure our 'economy' so that it serves the happiness and well-being of people. Leaving aside the obvious problems of homelessness and joblessness and all the other social ills, how many people feel their lives and potential are fulfilled? The things that matter, that have always mattered most, are family, friends, community. All of these things teeter on the edge...and no matter what anybody tells you, no amount of material wealth can substitute for any of them.

The growth spiral

Our expanding global consumer lifestyles and increased difficulty to find easy access, non renewable resources or places to safely deposit our waste, be it plastic bags or fracking fluids, are now approaching, or have exceeded our planet's abilities to deal with these in the geological short term.

At its core, is the supposed need for continuous growth, the more, the better, in order to obtain security and pleasure, despite exceeding natural carrying capacity (even reducing such with our activities) and fooling ourselves with a sort of phantom carrying capacity by depending on resources, such as transporting food and goods, even water, to and from other global regions, often unnecessarily.

In the "Ecofootrint" model, we in the west have exceeded our "fair earth share". But that share constantly decreases as population grows and the planet's potential for renewable resources is diminished by many of our extractive activities.

Just consider how oil sands, open pit coal mines, tree farms, oil palm and sugar cane plantations have replaced bio diverse forests and wetlands, on an ever increasingly massive scale. Likewise in ocean and other aquatic environments.

This spiral of more development and more jobs, requiring more workers and therefore more immigration, housing and infrastructure, requiring more funding, and so more development...

Like an addiction, it only gets more costly, usually recouped in financial terms, (plus bonuses for some), but at a huge cost to the environment, our health and our descendants' lifestyles and lives.

Zero or near zero growth (improvement is not the same as growth) should be civilization's goal at this point, but appears absolutely insane from the competetive, consumer capitalist paradigm.

Then again, that model appears absolutely insane from the sustainability perspective.

The two can ocassionally co-exist to produce a win-win situation, but are much more often incompatible.

Awareness of supply side economics, in its broadest sense, is flowering, but our leaders are still stuck in the capitalist "Voodoo" of demand side economics, while land and water based global resources are rapidly being privatized.

That denies human rights to those resources, except as commodities.

This connection is rarely considered by the consumer, especially at Christmas.

Then again, every purchase is a political statement. A purchase from WalMart sends a very different message than one from Value Village or a farmer's market. That's a small start to step back from this shrouded abyss.

We had very good lifestyles,

We had very good lifestyles, women had cosmetics, workers decent wages and most owned homes, etc. in the 50s and 60s with a fraction of the present pollution.

It is not decent lifestyles that cause pollution and environmental and human degradation, but the "creation" of deregulated money by the banks and our capitalists sending their factories and production systems to their communist brothers in China, demanding huge wastage in transport and poverty here.

The first foodbanks opened in ultra "conservative" and wealthy Alberta, about 30 years ago, with the forced introduction of the present fraudulent economic system.

Ed Deak.

Less is More

It would be interesting to see how the market reacts to a cessation of construction of new dwellings in the Lower Mainland.

"Get'em while you can! These are the last!"

I wonder if they also want to stop renovations?

Another missed reference...

Those who have any doubt about the future of growth should look into the work of CS Holling and "panarchy" theory.

When you combine that with the work of HT and Elizabeth Odum, you discover that the "technology will save us" crowd are seriously deluded.

Technology is a form of complexity, and complexity is a function of energy, and energy... is never going to be cheap again. So get ready for a future with *less* technology, not more.

Granville...

Chill with the snide comments about women, ok? I've noticed you do it fairly often and it's starting to get dull. "Some" women spend a lot of money on cosmetics- many women in this city don't. What was the point of this comment "Are they so ugly they need to cover their faces..?" Did that contribute anything to this discussion?? You're kind of getting on my nerves; I like some of your comments and then you write crap like that and it just irritates me.

R/M old man....

How does the market react when there is the least hint of oil restrictions? Depending on the phase of the moon, prices either rise or fall.

Yours is a pointless speculation.

Top stage of panarchy evident to those who look

Bytesmiths, I think you nailed it, although I would extend technology beyond just energy.

15th. and 16th. century China had huge energy resources but, after their days of exploration, got stuck in a bureaucratic, static mode that set them back for centuries. Zero growth, not. Little, far sighted, good leadership, likely.

At some level, we have a similar complexity problem that gives rise to the notion of "government bad and business good" (and "no tax is a good tax" from our esteemed leader).

Balance is essential, not too far one way or the other, the Yin Yang.

Comlplexity makes such balance more difficult to achieve, and so, the overly complex system eventually collapses (love that new car that nobody, even the best mechanics, can fix, must be a lemon).

The part not mentioned is how the panarchy deniers, even though they may not have called it such, comfortable in their priviledged roles in a stable socio-homoeostatic system, how they feared and persecuted those who justifiably worked around truth searching, including possible system collapse, be it from the Vatican to Rapa Nui/Easter island, and in a complex, indirect way, (note Tea Party funding or drilling on alienated land holders) to today's fossil fuel energy corporations.

It would seem that our multi faceted, extremly complex system is beginning to unravel, although few at the top would admit such. Might cause panic.

But to ignore it will produce a greater panic down the way.

Supposedly, our inteligence is measured by how quickly we can solve a problem, especially if it affects us, and to a lesser degree, perhaps as a last resort, how we might adapt to changing conditions.

Inteligent individuals, perhaps, as a civilization, hardly.

Hardly realistic

Rman, unless involved in home and business construction, most of our kids could care less if that "market" collapses, given that they can't afford to even purchase a modest home somewhere that doesn't also require the purchase of one or two commuting vehicles and their attendant time, fuel and maintenance costs.

Empty, offshore, speculative units jack up prices, among other dificulties, making it much tougher than needed for those who directly contribute to our city and community well being.

You need to go back to your systems' framework and tweak it, at the least, to real, not just market, parameters.

On the other hand, renos, in exchange for other services, seems to be doing quite well.

snert

From your link:

Read Stealth of Nations:
http://www.amazon.ca/Stealth-Nations-Global-Informal-Economy/dp/037542489X
The author posits that, in the near future about 2/3's of the world will operate in the "informal economy". He also thinks that the underground economy is not a bad thng, as it tends to boost local economies - something that governments of today only pay lipservice to.

Ed Deak

Cosmetics, yup, a very good lifestyle.

I was born and raised in Vancouver and remember, very distinctly, the difference in the pollution levels when the switch was made to natural gas from coal, wood, oil and sawdust furnaces. The air cleared up almost over night.

RickW

The drug money skews the results rather heavily. Just take a look at all the big fancy speed boats on the water and then pay attention to the fancy wheels on the Bimmers, Escalades and huge pickup trucks. They gotta have something to spend all that money on.

Yup, fancy wheels, a dead give-away. BTW, I'm not talkin' the factory fancy wheels.