We now theorize that on Easter Island, the societies that presided there destroyed their island's environment to such an extent that they themselves were essentially destroyed.
To prevent that from happening, it would have made no impact if a few individuals would have stopped the harmful actions. They would have had to change the whole culture of consumption, production, even religion. See where I'm going with this?
Depends on the nature of "something" and the value of "necessary". If somebody argued that to avoid global overpopulation and Malthusian catastrophe, we are to kill every 10th child born - you would probably reject this, even though the argument would be "it is necessary to avoid a global scale catastrophe".
So far all Malthusian predictions of global scale exhaustion reliably turned false and in most cases, laughably so, in hindsight. This teaches us that such claims should be taken with extreme skepticism and drastic measures proposed under these claims are most probably not justified.
This, of course, does not contradict the usability of technology (or non-technology means) for greater efficiency of energy use, conservation, etc. There's nothing wrong with recycling, reuse and energy saving. It just doesn't need to be turned to extremes under the slogans of future catastrophe that would never happen.
> We now theorize that on Easter Island, the societies that presided there destroyed their island's environment to such an extent that they themselves were essentially destroyed.
Actually, it's a matter of dispute among anthropologists and archaeologists. A notable book came out on the topic last year that contradicts the "ecological collapse" view:
Do you live in a magical world where the two people vying for executive power in the most powerful country weren't scared of admitting to our failing ability to generate electricity efficiently OR in a green manner?
Most historians now believe that the population collapse on Easter Island (Rapa Nui) was due to diseases brought in by European sailors and slave raiding by the Peruvians, rather than any ecological collapse.
Nobody actually knows what happened on Easter Island. There are as many theories as there are people trying to peddle their concept of how the world will / won't end.
Your comment made me think: interestingly, "growth" as a key concept is being forced on all of us right now, no matter one appreciates it or not... (either directly or indirectly).
If I forget about the word itself (and being unsure of the cultural connotation associated with it outside France - which I have no idea of), I personally do relate to the following sentence in the wikipedia definition:
===
maximize happiness and well-being through non-consumptive means—sharing work, consuming less, while devoting more time to art, music, family, culture and community
Well, a bank account is almost required for life in most Western countries now (unless you can receive all your income/benefits and pay all your bills in cash - not even an option for my salary or utility bills), and banks are only willing to give every Joe Public a current account on the assumption that they'll be able to make a profit on most of the money on the stock market before Joe wants it back, and the assumption that you can almost always make that profit is based on growth being an almost inevitable fixture of the universe...
...so yes, I think growth has forced its way into our day-to-day lives even if you are successfully ignoring any suggestions to buy the latest consumer gadgetry.
That is a seriously strange complaint. The reason a bank can provide a service to your for free is that it expects growth in society, therefore growth is forced upon you?
I read '"growth" as a key concept is being forced on all of us right now' to mean it's hard to opt out of a lifestyle which is dependent on economic growth as a given, which I agree with, and gave the above as an example. I may have misunderstood the slightly ambiguous quoted text; do you believe this to be the case, or do you still find my reasoning "seriously strange"?
Yes. Where are you being coerced to take any action you wouldn't have otherwise taken because of the way your bank makes money? Why would your life be less growthy if you happened to pay your bank a few dollars a month instead?
By the society we're part of, as a whole. This includes politics, industries, businesses, and ourselves.
Individual decisions only go so far - you can decide to "degrowth", but if the politics, or culture, or industries are oriented toward growth, this is pretty much a drop in the water (well until a given subject becomes suddenly important, like we saw with environmental issues in France a couple of years back).
If as a society we consider stability and sustainability to be more important than growth, then this affects a lot of our decisions: expectations of how long a given useful product should work (appliances etc), how we decide about things that are worth investing time and resources in, subjects to be taught at school, kind of jobs to be created etc.
Now a true "cultural" question: you mentioned that people should not "expect the rest of us to appreciate being forced to do it" - is that because in your country, there is an activism (perceived as negative?) around degrowth?
Honest question: I'd like to understand your initial reaction!
You're sort of grasping that no one agent is actually in charge of the whole shebang -- that it's an emergent phenomenon.
Any genuine attempt at degrowth will require some pretty unpopular policies. Folk like that their lives, on the whole, improve over time (modulo real estate in first world countries ... but that's another rant for another time).
So it's possible to degrowth at an individual level; but at a societal level, it would require force and cause more disruption than people realise.
The pursuit of economic growth shapes government policy, and although government may not always station their guns and dogs outside your residence, their decisions impact pretty much everything you do in some way.
So I'm 9 days late to this thread (don't know how I missed it, I must have been doing something), but I can't let this infectious antitruth stand.
There are indeed men with guns, dogs, and even armored vehicles forcing you to carry out most of your transactions in USD, thereby giving value to USD no matter how poorly it is being managed. Maximizing production through government spending and new money creation overdriving the economy is the thesis of Keynesian economics. What exactly does a 0.2% interest rate say about how we view preparing for tomorrow?
Just don't expect the rest of us to appreciate being forced to do it.