[MCN] Your money or your life? The carbon-development paradox: Feeding fossil fuels to the economy v human well-being

[Lance Olsen]

Environmental Research Letters  March 27, 2020

Your money or your life? The carbon-development paradox
Julia K Steinberger et al

OPEN ACCESS pdf <<https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7461/pdf <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7461/pdf>>> 

Excerpts : Economic growth as usual may be threatened by full decarbonization, given the extremely rapid rates that are necessary to avert dangerous climate change [5, 28, 42]. But the same may not hold true for maintaining and enhancing human well-being. Past advances in life expectancy are very weakly coupled to increases in primary energy use and carbon emissions. The implications of this are profound: rapidly decreasing emissions, even through reductions in primary energy demand, need not be catastrophic in terms of our well-being, so long as instrumental need satisfiers (such as food and household electricity) are prioritized [22, 26, 27, 38, 58, 59]

Overconsumption, by contrast, strains individuals and societies, as revealed by research across the fields of philosophy, psychology and the medical sciences [61].

In other words, climate research is no longer just a matter of identifying cost-effective mitigation measures; it must expand the solution space to social policy, action and activism as well [38, 64–66]. In this regard, embracing a well-being orientation directs us towards understanding how human needs can be provisioned equitably and sustainably within biophysical limits [6, 32, 67]. This involves exploring lightly trodden research paths: which are the most important satisfiers of human needs? What social, economic and technical conditions are necessary to put them in place? And what possibilities exist for the low-carbon satisfaction of human needs [38]?

Moreover, in terms of policies and politics, we need to face the reality that feeding fossil fuels to the economy is far less beneficial to human development outcomes than directly satisfying our own needs.

OPEN ACCESS pdf <<https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7461/pdf <https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab7461/pdf>>>

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“The US economy is based on debt-financed overconsumption, while China’s is based on debt-financed overinvestment.”

South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
<<https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3040618/federal-reserve-prolonging-trade-war-keeping-biggest-financial>>

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