Will the End of Economic Growth Come by Design — or Disaster? | Gaya Herrington | TED

Let’s contemplate the word “enough,”

because I think it will play an important role going forward.

When I watch the news or scroll my feeds,

I keep coming back to the same questions.

Why, despite all our knowledge and innovation,

do problems like poverty and pollution keep plaguing humanity?

Why, despite astonishing advances

in renewable energy and resource efficiency,

is fossil fuel use at an all-time high,

as is our global ecological footprint?

And why, despite being responsible for the main part of that footprint,

have rich countries been experiencing stagnating,

if not decreasing, well-being?

I'm a sustainability researcher with a background in econometrics,

and I believe the answer lies in the fact

that solving poverty, caring for nature or fostering well-being

is not the ultimate goal of our current economic system.

Its goal is growth.

Many take this for granted.

But growth wasn't considered a moral goal for most of history.

It was only officially measured

around the middle of last century

through GDP.

It then shifted into the core of our economic thinking

and from there into policymaking and our collective psyche.

Growth became synonymous with progress.

Things went fast after that.

Extinction rates went up, resource use and waste exploded.

Some warned early on about the dangers of exponential growth on a finite planet.

In 1972, a team of MIT scientists

created a first-of-its-kind world model

consisting of over 200 interconnected variables.

With it, they analyzed the question I mentioned earlier:

why problems like poverty and pollution persist.

They published a book on their findings called "The Limits to Growth,"

in which they warned that continuing the business-as-usual growth pursuit

would lead to societal breakdown,

setting in around now.

Breakdown doesn't mean the end of humanity,

but a steep decline in well-being nonetheless.

The book was a bestseller, but you may have never heard of it.

The authors were derided as doomsayers

and their message, over time, buried.

A few years back, I compared their now decades-old projections

with what's happened since.

I found empirical data closely aligning

with the model's business-as-usual scenario,

which shows growth grinding to a halt around 2040 or so,

followed by steep declines

in things like food production and well-being.

My analysis also revealed that this breakdown could be avoided

by letting go of the growth pursuit

and redirecting resources to meet human needs

and protect nature directly.

This indicates that what we do in the next few years

will determine our well-being for the rest of this century.

And this now-or-never moment in history is up to us.

Technology by itself will not save us,

despite aspirational talks of decoupling,

the idea that the economy can grow

without resource use and pollution growing along with it.

There's no decoupling,

certainly not for a full impact on the Earth.

Raw materials consumption has been around 1.2 kilograms per dollar GDP

for two decades,

while biodiversity loss, water scarcity, plastic pollution are all worsening.

But even just considering carbon emissions,

which per dollar GDP have decreased,

sufficient, absolute decoupling,

which is what we'd need,

is nowhere in the data.

Our choice isn't whether to keep growing or not.

It's whether the end of growth will come by design or disaster.

Either we choose our own limits,

or we'll have them forced upon us.

Now that humankind has reached global, unparalleled power,

“Limits to Growth” confronts us with a question we’ve never faced before:

Who do we want to be,

and what world do we want to live in?

Here's where "enough" comes in.

If I were to describe the mantra we need in the 21st century with one word,

it would be "enough."

"Enough" as in "no more." This is the limit.

Say, a planetary boundary.

And enough as in "sufficient,"

juxtaposing it to this exhausting grind for ever more

and instead invoking a notion of sharing, as in "enough for each."

I believe the only realistic plan to avoid breakdown

and maintain global well-being

lies in this mindset shift

from "never enough" to "enough for each."

Change the goal of our economic system

from growth to human and ecological well-being.

A well-being economy.

What would that look like?

We have an idea because we already pretend that's what we have.

No vision statement reads:

"A world where growth perpetuates at all costs indefinitely."

It talks about how this organization contributes to society,

because that's what we feel it should do.

In a well-being economy,

business activities, government policies and citizen behavior

are aimed at meeting our physical, social and spiritual needs

within planetary boundaries.

It doesn't mean we're anti-growth,

it just means we're more selective about it.

We differentiate between what should and should not grow,

depending on whether it contributes to well-being.

This implies different pathways towards a well-being economy

for low- and high-income countries.

At small material footprints,

growth more often correlates with well-being,

including through poverty reduction.

So poorer countries below their share of Earth’s carrying capacity

may still need green growth,

economic expansion driven by clean technologies.

In richer countries, what has decoupled from growth is happiness,

so they can and should focus on reducing ecological footprints

to sustainable levels

while safeguarding everyone's livelihood

by sharing more equally.

Let me stress because I hear this misconception a lot.

Decentering growth doesn’t mean shrinking the economy until it crashes.

It means reducing our environmental impact

to within a safe operating space for life as we know it.

That's not going back to a poorer past.

That's changing the forward direction away from a cliff.

We'll still have houses with fridges,

good schools, health care, profitable businesses.

We'll go to jobs and parties.

But social norms and economic dynamics will change.

We'll redefine what has value or what work we call productive.

With our needs securely met,

this trade-off between social and environmental benefits,

which we often take as given, dissolves.

Sharing more equally means less income and wealth inequality,

improving social cohesion

and reducing wasteful, conspicuous consumption.

Efficiency gains are used to work less instead of produce more.

By not pursuing growth at all costs,

we can avoid a lot of costs,

like all the expenditure on health care and cleanups due to pollution.

Moving to a post-growth society isn't choosing permanent recession.

It's flexing our free will to change our notion of prosperity

from ever more to better.

How probable is this economic transformation?

It's feasible. That's half the answer.

We know what promotes well-being.

In fact, policies like zero tolerance on child poverty

or GDP alternatives

are exchanged already in WIEGO,

a partnership of self-proclaimed well-being governments.

Dozens of cities are piloting post-growth frameworks

to operate within explicit social and environmental boundaries,

with practices like universal basic incomes.

I love how companies that put people and planet legally above profit

generate billions each year.

How communities are taking back stewardship of their commons

with co-ops and renewable energy,

water or food.

Or how recent experiments with shorter workweeks for the same pay

were so successful that most of those companies made it permanent.

We also have the technological capabilities,

which will be pivotal, once directed towards the right goal.

This redirection is indispensable.

But of course, I'm regularly told the techno-optimist argument

that it's not.

And I always respond.

Let's say we could replace the dying bee colonies

with robot pollinators.

Why do that if we can also advance regenerative agriculture,

which doesn't cause insecticide?

Why dedicate our innovative powers to tree-planting drones

when we can also use that thinking

to redesign our economy so that existing forest isn't cut down?

And that brings me to the other half of the answer,

to how probable a well-being economy is.

It's promise.

We'd have less stuff, but more of what we need.

Connection.

Maintaining a sense of community and purpose is hard

in this current economic system,

which treats us as selfish, never satisfied consumers.

Research shows we're not just capable of caring for life,

we derive joy and meaning from it.

We can't be truly happy unless those around us thrive too.

This economic transformation

wouldn't be a capitulation to grim necessity.

We'd want to do it even if we were not facing ecosystem collapse,

because a well-being economy fits much better who we want to be

and a world we long to live in.

So we started with these global problems

and found that changing our economic system is imperative,

but also feasible.

And no sacrifice,

but simply a letting go of what's no longer serving us

to find belonging in a post-growth world of embraced interdependence.

If that sounds spiritual, that's what a well-being economy delivers.

Physical sufficiency, social abundance and spiritual wealth,

including the peace of mind that this prosperity can last.

Thank you.

(Applause)

Logan McClure Davda: Thank you, Gaya.

So you spoke tonight about broader economic transformation.

But what can we as individuals do?

Gaya Herrington: Yes. You have to find your unique influence in the system.

So that starts by changing the system's narrative.

We've been told the story of separation.

We are selfish, violent beings, doomed to exploit our commons,

so the best thing we can hope for then is technology to save us.

So you would have to start by working from a different narrative:

the story of interdependence,

in which we are nature.

Once our needs are securely met,

we rejoice in contributing to this web of life

that we're all part of.

So you talk about bringing it back to the personal level.

That's actually very emotional work. It's deeply personal.

But of course, it cannot stay there.

So then the next step is to build out this new narrative

in the system's structures.

And that very much depends on where you are.

If you're in a corporation,

look into regenerative business models.

If you're in government, look into well-being government policies.

If you're an investor, see if you can transition

from ESG assessments, which are relative,

to the absolute assessments against social foundations

and planetary boundaries.

If you're an entrepreneur, look into employee ownership.

Everyone, citizens, buy at not-for-profit companies.

See if community solar makes sense for you.

So there's so many things that you can do, but it very much depends on where you are.

But there is one general piece of advice that I can give,

and that's: work together.

And remember that systems change

is not linear.

People do this very disjointedly at first,

and then over time they build connections

until a critical minority mass is reached,

typically around 25 percent or so.

And only then does the majority come along

because the system change becomes self-reinforcing.

Now there's no guarantee that that will happen

for the economic transformation that I'm proposing,

but if it does, it will have been because people like you

that are gathered here today

contributed to that change in their own unique way.

So thank you for listening.

LMD: Thank you, Gaya.

(Applause)