{"id":50515,"date":"2021-06-24T20:09:35","date_gmt":"2021-06-24T19:09:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=50515"},"modified":"2021-06-24T20:09:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T19:09:35","slug":"julian-sheather-post-growth-why-health-is-central-to-a-sustainable-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/06\/24\/julian-sheather-post-growth-why-health-is-central-to-a-sustainable-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Julian Sheather: Post Growth\u2014why health is central to a sustainable economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In his fascinating new book <\/span>Post Growth<\/span><\/i>, Tim Jackson, director of the <\/span>Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity<\/span><\/a>, asks a disarmingly straightforward question: how are we to live well within the limits of a finite planet? What might prosperity for the world\u2019s population look like, given how close we are to the hard limits of our resources? As with many such questions it is far easier to ask than to answer. But in guiding us toward a response, Jackson asks us to think about something very familiar indeed\u2014namely our health, specifically the idea of health as a kind of balance.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But some preamble is required. Go looking for reasons why the world\u2019s leaders have shielded their eyes to the gathering data about climate and the answer is likely to be: it\u2019s the economy, stupid. Or, more specifically, the apparently inescapable requirement for economies to grow. There is a moral imperative here. In so far as rising affluence is linked to human flourishing\u2014and I\u2019ll come back to this\u2014then, on the face of it, growth looks like a good, even a necessary thing, (although this sets aside what cannot be set aside: that if economic growth is linked to increased material throughput we cannot continue to grow indefinitely. To continue to grow in the face of hard resource constraints tips a potential moral good into an incalculable harm.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There is also a suite of economic imperatives behind our commitment to growth. I am no economist, but among them is the absolute dependence of capitalist economies on debt, which becomes radically unstable in times of low or negative growth; and the requirement for growth to offset the tendency for innovation to improve efficiency. Without growth, efficiency will drive unemployment\u2014fewer hours required to produce the same quantity of goods\u2014and rising unemployment means fewer wages, declining retail spending, cutbacks in investment and further reductions in unemployment\u2014and so on and on in a vicious spiral. (For a far better account of this than I can muster, see Jackson\u2019s earlier, hugely influential, <\/span>Prosperity Without Growth\u2014<\/span><\/i><\/a>from which the above is borrowed.) This brings us to the two propositions that structure what Jackson calls the dilemma of growth:<\/span><\/p>\n