Growthbuster’s Recent Comments

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  Standing for Something

  I love how John feels it's the politicians' job to compromise, not the environmentalist organizations'. Oh that he would offer his consulting services to the green groups! Of course I wish the politicians could/would stand for what's right more often, as well.

  Dave Gardner Producer/Director Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity www.growthbusters.com

  On Outgoing Greenpeace leader talks about activism, economics, and his next steps posted 10 months, 1 week ago 3 Responses

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  It's the growth addiction

  Just like Atlanta, we believe our economies depend on perpetual growth to remain healthy, so we implement dozens of public policies to drive population growth (which virtually guarantees rising GDP year after year, so far). Then we pretend we can't do anything about population growth; it's a free country.

  Then we try every miraculous and expensive technological solution to exhausted water supplies imaginable. Experts suggest conservation, dams, pipelines, aquifer mining, aquifer injection, cloud-seeding, and ultimately idling of irrigated agriculture (let's use more oil and increase our carbon footprint shipping food 1,000s of miles to these arid urban centers). The simple solution is to get unhooked from population growth as an economic engine.On Lake Mead could run out of water by 2021, says study posted 1 year, 8 months ago 11 Responses

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  Think globally but fail to act locally?

  In researching the population subject taboo for my documentary, I've come to believe much of the problem is driven by our obsession with economic growth and the failure to act locally. We are our own worst enemy at every level. How can we even expect population stabilization, let alone reduction, when communities compete with one another to increase inmigration (they call it "economic development"), when the U.S. and other nations turn to immigration to keep adding cheap labor and Wal-Mart customers, and nations experiencing population decline today are offering baby bonuses out of concern for a shrinking economy?

  Dave Gardner
  Producer/Director
  Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
  www.growthbusters.com

  Dave Gardner Producer/Director Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity www.growthbusters.com

  On Is it only OK to talk about limiting population after it's too late? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 117 Responses

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  It would be so easy...

  I believe many of us who complain about economists do so out of our distaste for the assumption that MORE should automatically be a goal. Sadly the biggest source of funding for academic economists and income for other economists is big business. Their goal is an expanding market, growing revenue and increasing profits. That means we are bombarded with way too much growth-centric rhetoric from economists in the media.

  I think this growth fever has even infected many of the "liberals" discussed in this thread. I wonder why so much energy is invested in trying to find the next heroic technology fix for problems that could be so easily remedied if we could optimize the size of our population on the planet and cease clamoring for ever-increasing economic throughput. Hah, everyone will think! What is so easy about that? Too true. Human nature being what it is, these easy fixes are probably just beyond our grasp. Too bad, because  they don't include all the risks of catastrophic unintended consequences that come with techno-fixes.

  Dave Gardner Producer/Director Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity www.growthbusters.com

  On Economists cannot predict the future posted 1 year, 10 months ago 69 Responses

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  Denial

  As long as our policy-makers don't have the vision and courage to recognize and admit we have exceeded our limits in the West (not to mention the planet!), we'll keep trying to shift water rights, dam another river (can you believe that is actually on the table?), kill agriculture, and somehow believe low-flow toilets will allow us to continue our worship of growth everlasting.On Western states and feds agree to new pact on Colorado River drought rules posted 1 year, 10 months ago 2 Responses