The Oil Drum

I've seen this point many times, in many different places, all of them vague.

Could you explain to me how exactly slowing overall economic growth down to zero percent would require drastic structural changes in an economy? I don't quite see it being so difficult... perhaps I'm just thinking of near-zero population growth japan and europe?

What about a dynamic market equilibrium is so difficult to sustain?

"Growth and sustainability don't go together."
What a strange statement.

Nature continually grows and finds its balances.. ('sustainability'), to survive and continue. But the natural world, including our own bodies does this with cycles of rest, advances and retreats, birth and death. Yes, we may well be talking about a very different kind of society, where we have checked our assumptions attached to the idea of 'Growth'. We have attached an assumption of immortality to some of our institutions and our creations (Like Corporations or Governments), so that we, in constant (Euro/Western) fear of death can refuse to let them die when their time has come. (GM Bailouts.. etc)

There is an abundance of healthy growth in business, education, personal development that we can see as a clear outcome of investing in forms of 'Sustainability' that we could be developing at this point. There are already plenty of reports about how environmental actions have created jobs, cut costs and boosted economies, where the naysayers had predicted the blight of entire regions if anyone dared to challenge the 'unrestrained consumptive greed' model for doing business.

Just the actions of 'rebreaking the table' will shake out a lot of dead wood and inspire all sorts of healthy new growth, and should also help to fortify against some of the cancerous growth of industries that have taken root against all common sense. It's what you do with a blueberry field.. burn it over to get the old stuff out of the way, and ready for fresh, clean growth to begin.

Bob Fiske