image via flickr user hoyasmeg

Dr. Herman Daly is not your average former World Bank Senior Economist. He is an ecological economist who has been writing books like For the Common Good and advocating for ideas such as the creation of a steady-state economy for 40 years. Dr. Daly just might know how to build a truly green economy.

What is uneconomic growth and is this already occurring?

Uneconomic growth occurs when costs grow faster than benefits. That is growth that makes you poorer, not richer.

Yes, I think there is a good deal of evidence that we have crossed over into an era of uneconomic growth. But we still call it economic growth. All growth is economic growth as we measure it because we don’t have separate accounts for costs and benefits. We just throw everything into the same pot and call it economic activity. And then the assumption is that that activity is somehow good.

Is moving toward a steady state economy or a zero growth economy the answer?

Yes. This is an economy that provides for our needs without growing larger each year—an economy that only uses the sustainable amount of resources and pollution sinks provided by the ecosystem. You would then back away from putting such a huge burden on the ecosystem.

It seems impossible for a politician to consider this option.

Well, it may be that there is a conflict between two impossibilities. It is politically impossible to limit growth, but it is biophysically impossible to continue it. That is a really tough dilemma. You have to choose on which horn of the dilemma you want to be impaled. I guess I would prefer to take my chances with political impossibility because I am pretty convinced that I can’t do a thing about biophysical impossibility.

Back to the first issue of uneconomic growth: [I wonder] if countries and politicians can ever be firmly convinced that growth is making them poorer instead of richer because it is increasing costs faster than benefits. That is a pretty strong argument that even standard economic types ought to be able to understand. If you experience suffering as a result of a continuous push for growth, then that may begin to teach us something about what we should be doing.

How do you motivate people in a zero-growth economy?

Everybody will still have to work and produce to make a living. We just won’t continue growing. We will still have to reproduce the same pie year after year after year. We just won’t be reproducing a bigger and bigger pie.