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J’ai l’habitude de voir les écologistes et les futurologues parler des limites de la croissance (« The Limits to Growth »). Je suis moins habitué à voir des spécialistes de l’investissement mentionner des recherches liées aux limites de la croissance. C’est pourtant ce qu’a fait récemment Joachim Klement dans sa lettre d’information quotidienne. Bien entendu, quiconque écrit sur les limites de la croissance doit d’abord procéder à toutes les vérifications d’usage. En effet, la combinaison des mots « limites » et « croissance » dans le titre a suscité un grand nombre de réactions critiques, allant de la déformation pure et simple de l’ouvrage à l’incompréhension du modèle de dynamique des systèmes qui le sous-tend.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently.

I’m used to environmentalists and futurists writing about The Limits to Growth. I’m less used to seeing investment writers mention research that’s linked to The Limits of Growth. But that’s what Joachim Klement did in his daily newsletter recently. Of course, anyone who writes about Limits of Growth has to do all the usual disclaimers first. This is because the combination of the words “limits” and “growth” in the title produced a lot of critical responses, on a range from straight-up hatchet jobs which misrepresented the book, to people who didn’t appear to understand the systems dynamics model that sat behind it.

Before you read this, a word of caution. You may want to prepare yourself a stiff drink and sit down before you read the following. I think most people who read this will at some point in their life heard about the Club of Rome’s Limit to Growth publication from the 1970s. Back then, the Club of Rome asked the MIT to produce a series of forecasts for the world’s industrial and services output, food production, and pollution levels to the year 2100. Almost from the get-go, these forecasts were derided as scaremongering and flat out wrong. But were they really?

These are difficult times indeed, with terrible news on many fronts. What are the prospects for the degrowth1 alternative as we move through 2025? Dark times: the current context First, we need to understand what is going on around us: what is the evolving context with which degrowth has to contend, and to which it has to present a viable alternative?

There are increasing concerns that continued economic growth in high-income countries might not be environmentally sustainable, socially beneficial, or economically achievable. In this Review, we explore the rapidly advancing field of post-growth research, which has evolved in response to these concerns. The central idea of post-growth is to replace the goal of increasing GDP with the goal of improving human wellbeing within planetary boundaries. Key advances discussed in this Review include: the development of ecological macroeconomic models that test policies for managing without growth; understanding and reducing the growth dependencies that tie social welfare to increasing GDP in the current economy; and characterising the policies and provisioning systems that would allow resource use to be reduced while improving human wellbeing. Despite recent advances in post-growth research, important questions remain, such as the politics of transition, and transformations in the relationship between the Global Nort

Added complexity allows an economy to grow, even as resource limits are reached. But at some point, the complexity itself becomes a problem.

Literature reviews are usually quite uncontroversial. But this is not the case of “Reviewing studies of degrowth: Are claims matched by data, methods and policy analysis?”, a recent paper by Ivan Savin and Jeroen van den Bergh, two economists at the Autonomous University of Barcelona....

Economic growth allows the few to grow ever-wealthier. Ending poverty and environmental catastrophe demands fresh thinking

À la veille des élections, des scientifiques mènent des actions dans la capitale pour alerter sur les risques climatiques. Les rapports alarmants sur le climat se multiplient, mais le monde politique n’en tient pas suffisamment compte aux yeux des scientifiques. Pour mieux se faire entendre, des chercheurs et académiques belges et internationaux ont donc décidé, en cette veille d’élections, d’opter pour la désobéissance civile.

Ce matin une vingtaine de scientifiques ont bloqué les entrées de la Commission européenne afin de réclamer la décroissance vue comme “la seule option pour sortir de l’impasse sociale et environnementale”

La crise écologique est une menace existentielle pour la vie sur Terre. Le GIEC estime que, sur notre trajectoire actuelle, il est très probable que nous dépassions même la limite des 2 degrés ¹ et que plusieurs points de basculement soient franchis ², au-delà desquels le réchauffement climatique s’accélérera de manière incontrôlée et les phénomènes météorologiques extrêmes deviendront la norme, ce qui conduira à une extinction massive.³ En outre, avec l’effondrement de la biodiversité et les pollutions de toutes sortes, 6 des 9 limites planétaires ont été franchies ⁴, causant des dommages irréversibles à la vie sur Terre et mettant en péril la sécurité alimentaire et hydrique. Face au plus grand défi jamais posé à l’humanité, nous devons prendre des mesures immédiates pour limiter cette catastrophe en cours.

After 50 years, there is still an ongoing debate about the Limits to Growth (LtG) study. This paper recalibrates the 2005 World3-03 model. The input parameters are changed to better match empirical data on world development. An iterative method is used to compute and optimize different parameter sets. This improved parameter set results in a World3 simulation that shows the same overshoot and collapse mode in the coming decade as the original business as usual scenario of the LtG standard run. The main effect of the recalibration update is to raise the peaks of most variables and move them a few years into the future. The parameters with the largest relative changes are those related to industrial capital lifetime, pollution transmission delay, and urban-industrial land development time.

Op woensdag 15 november om 15 uur verstoorden activisten van het GrowthKills-collectief [1] het "re-use v. recycle"-panel op de jaarlijkse Sustainability Future Week van Politico in Brussel, een evenement waar verslaggevers en redacteuren belangrijke politici, wetenschappers, campagnevoerders en bedrijfsleiders interviewen over het energie- en klimaatbeleid van de EU [2].

We beginnen de sociale en ecologische crises steeds meer te voelen, en dus valt “degrowth” of ‘ontgroei’ niet langer weg te denken uit het debat. Maar helaas circuleren er hardnekkige misverstanden over die ontgroei. Hoog tijd om die definitief uit de wereld te helpen, vindt econoom Jonas Van der Slycken.

Scientists have raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonise fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth. Over the past decade, some countries have reduced their CO2 emissions while increasing their gross domestic product (absolute decoupling). Politicians and media have hailed this as green growth. In this empirical study, we aimed to assess whether these achievements are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and whether Paris-compliant decoupling is within reach.

Lancet study finds 'green growth' policies fall far short of what's needed to prevent dangerous change…

Met zo’n 2.500 waren ze, de deelnemers aan de Beyond Growth Conferentie in het Europees Parlement, en tel daarbij nog eens bijna het dubbele aantal deelnemers online. Hiermee was de conferentie het grootste evenement ooit over ‘de groei voorbij’, en zelfs het grootste evenement ooit in het Europees Parlement. Het initiatief lag bij een groep van 20 parlementsleden uit 5 grote fracties, met Philippe Lamberts (Ecolo) als stuwende kracht.

Na de coronapandemie, de oorlog in Oekraïne en de steeds sluimerende opstoten van migratiecrises, komt stilaan weer de meest omvangrijke van alle crises, de klimaatproblematiek, bovenaan de belangstelling van de media.

And what we need to do it right,