Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nozzlegear 564 days ago
Degrowth doesn't work either, it's not a solution and nobody will ever go for it. From the abstract of Reviewing studies of degrowth: Are claims matched by data, methods and policy analysis?:

> (2) the large majority (almost 90%) of studies are opinions rather than analysis;

> (3) few studies use quantitative or qualitative data, and even fewer ones use formal modelling;

> (4) the first and second type tend to include small samples or focus on non-representative cases;

> (5) most studies offer ad hoc and subjective policy advice, lacking policy evaluation and integration with insights from the literature on environmental/climate policies;

> (6) of the few studies on public support, a majority concludes that degrowth strategies and policies are socially-politically infeasible;

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180092...

1 comments

> Degrowth doesn't work either

It's literally the only mathematically viable option. Either you choose it and plan for it or you hit the wall and deal with the consequences. Just take a gpd per capita world map, superimpose it over a pollution per capita world map, and extrapole the impact of china+india+africa living like the average american or even the average european, it just doesn't work out, but it's coming very soon

> Either you choose it and plan for it or you hit the wall and deal with the consequences.

That's the problem though, without a sea change in human behavior, nobody will ever choose it. As the paper I linked points out, degrowth is a political self-own. Nobody likes it, nobody wants it, and hardly anybody has even studied it properly. Planning on hitting the wall and dealing with the consequences is our reality, so studies like the OP have a real and practical use.

It's not coming very soon because those populations are going to completely skip the phase where every household has 2 or 3 fossil fuel vehicles.
Personal transportation is about 15% of co2 emissions. That hardly explains why the average American lifestyle produces literally 10 times more co2 than the average Indian's