for - economic growth - physical limits to - reductio ad absurdum - physical absurdity of continuing current energy and waste heat trends into the near future

paper details - title - Limits to Economic Growth - author - Thomas W. Murphy Jr. - date - 21 July, 2022 - publication - Nature Physics, comment, online - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01652-6

summary - Physicist Thomas W. Murphy employs reductio ab adsurdium logic to prove the fallacy of the assumptions of his argument - In this case, the argument is that we can indefinitely continue to sustain economic growth at rates that have held steady at about 2-3% per annum since the early 1900s. - Using both idealistic and simplified energy and waste heat calculations of energy and waste heat compounding at 2-3% per annum (or 10x per century), Murphy shows the absurd conclusions of continuing these current trends of energy and waste heat emissions on a global scale. - The implications are that physics and thermodynamics will naturally constrain us to plateau to a steady state economy in which the majority of economic activity needs to not depend on physically intensive

from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with science journalist Peter Brannen - https://hyp.is/66oSJD-AEe-rN08IjlMu5A/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

for - absurdity of indefinite economic growth - energy projection example of recent energy trends

-absurdity of indefinite economic growth - energy projections - Energy growth has typically been 2–3% per year since early 1900's. - This is approximately equivalent to 10x each century - Present-day energy output is 18 TW and extrapolates to - - approx.100 TW in 2100, - approx. 1,000 TW in 2200, etc. - In 400 years, from today, we would exceed the total solar power incident on Earth - In 1300 years from today, we would exceed the entire output of the Sun in all directions - In 2400 years from today, we would exceed the energy output of all 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy - This last jump is made impossible by the fact that even light cannot cross the galaxy in fewer than 100,000 years. - Hence, physics puts a hard limit on how long our energy growth enterprise could possibly continue

for - decoupling - economic growth from - physical resources

for - quote - economic growth - pioneering economists saw growth not as permanent, but as just a temporary phase

quote - economic growth - pioneering economists saw growth not as permanent, but as just a temporary phase - (see below) - Given that - assumptions of quantitative growth are pervasive in our society and - have been present for many generations, - it is perhaps not surprising that growth is not widely understood to be a transient phenomenon. - Early thinkers on the physical economy, such as - Adam Smith, <br /> - Thomas Malthus, - David Ricardo and - John Stuart Mill - saw the growth phase as just that: a phase

for - absurdity of indefinite economic growth - waste heat projection example of recent waste heat trends

absurdity of indefinite economic growth - waste heat projection example of recent waste heat trends - At present, the waste heat term is about four orders of magnitude smaller than the solar term. - But at a growth factor of ten per century, they would reach parity in roughly 400 years. - Indeed, the surface temperature of Earth would reach the boiling point of water (373 K) in just over 400 years under this relentless prescription.

for - limits to economic growth - physics calculations - by Tom Murphy show absurdity of continual growth - energy and waste heat perspective

to - Nature Physics - LImits to Economic Growth - Tom Murphy - https://hyp.is/CM3Grj9_Ee-obTc6jrPBRA/tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pdf

for - progress trap - AI triggering massive economic growth - planetary boundaries

progress trap - AI triggering massive economic growth - planetary boundaries - The podcaster does not consider the ramifications of the potential disastrous impact of such economic growth if not managed properly

for - liberalism - economic growth - adjacency - liberalism - economic growth

Adjacency - between - growth - liberalism - adjacency statement - Since researching the work of Christopher Shaw, and especially his book - Liberalism and the Challenge of Climate Change - I can see the adjacency between liberalism and economic growth - Laws are a cap on one type of behavioral liberty, and yet, there is no cap on consumptive liberty, which is what is causing us to collectively exceed natural limits

• from:LinkedIn Post shared by Phoebe Coyne on low economic growth can help achieve staying under 1.5 Deg C.

• for: climate solutions - low economic growth, Jason Hickel,

• for: population decline, economic growth vs population decline
• comment
  • John makes a good point
  • how will humans negotiate a growth economy when population is shrinking?
  • it may be that AI automation may lessen the need for human capacity, but the future is unknown how these forces will balance out

• 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
  • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
  • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
  • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
  • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
  • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
  • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
    • https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
  • This is the current state of offsets

31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

• 32:30 Neo-colonialism

  • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
  • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
  • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
  • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach

• 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

  • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
  • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
  • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
  • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
  • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire

• 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

  • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
  • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
  • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
  • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production

• 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

  • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.

• 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

  • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
  • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
  • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted

• 51:00 Degrowth making headway

  • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies

• 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

  • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
  • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
  • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
  • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
  • This is what it is to be human

Title: Assessment of extra capacity required of alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels Author: Prof. Simon Michaux, Geological Survey of Finland (GTK) Year: 2022

See especially P. Lindert, Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Ample evidence has shown that increasing taxes in Western countries along with the states' power to use it during the majority of the 1900s not only reduced inequalities but encouraged growth.

william lazonick's 'innovation theory', an alternative to 'agency theory'/MSV which argues that if the logic justifying shareholder's rights to profits (they take on risk) is true, workers and taxpayers also have a right to profits

infrastructure and the resulting economic gains can only happen once

Day. G., Shea. G., (2020). COVID-19: 3 ways businesses can find growth opportunities during the crisis. World Economic Forum. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/06/innovation-rethink-wharton-covid19-coronavirus

IZA – Institute of Labor Economics. ‘COVID-19 and the Labor Market’. Accessed 6 October 2020. https://covid-19.iza.org/publications/dp13664/.

London calling: Why it's time to bring life back to our city's streets. (n.d.). CityA.M. Retrieved August 11, 2020 from https://www.cityam.com/london-calling-why-its-time-to-bring-life-back-to-our-citys-streets/

Gale, W. G., Gelfond, H., Fichtner, J. J., & Harris, B. H. (2020). The Wealth of Generations, With Special Attention to the Millennials (Working Paper No. 27123; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27123

This means that the CO2 emissions caused by use of fossile fuels should be understood as a component of all emissions caused by continued economic growth.

Altig, D., Baker, S. R., Barrero, J. M., Bloom, N., Bunn, P., Chen, S., Davis, S. J., Leather, J., Meyer, B. H., Mihaylov, E., Mizen, P., Parker, N. B., Renault, T., Smietanka, P., & Thwaites, G. (2020). Economic Uncertainty Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Working Paper No. 27418; Working Paper Series). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w27418

Naudé, W. (2020). Entrepreneurial Recovery from COVID-19: Decentralization, Democratization, Demand, Distribution, and Demography. IZA Discussion Paper, 13436.

Burgess, M. G., Langendorf, R. E., Ippolito, T., & Pielke, R. (2020). Optimistically biased economic growth forecasts and negatively skewed annual variation [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/vndqr

European Semester Spring Package. (n.d.). [Text]. European Commission - European Commission. Retrieved May 31, 2020, from https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_20_901

Yu, Q., Salvador, C., Melani, I., Berg, M., & Kitayama, S. (2020, May 14). The lethal spiral: Racial segregation and economic disparity jointly exacerbate the COVID-19 fatality in large American cities. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/xgbpy

Pichler, Anton, Marco Pangallo, R. Maria del Rio-Chanona, François Lafond, and J. Doyne Farmer. “Production Networks and Epidemic Spreading: How to Restart the UK Economy?” ArXiv:2005.10585 [Physics, q-Fin], May 21, 2020. http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10585.