Economics and sustainability

Introduction
This article, which so far is a stub, is mainly about sustainability and traditional economics. It was sparked by a question on the localsustuk discussion list, which went something like: "Why is it taken for granted that countries need economic growth? And can standards of living be maintained in an economy which doesn't grow?"

Related Wikipedia content
There's an article on Economic growth and its advantages on Wikipedia. which approaches this from a general perspective. One of the reasons for setting up the Sustainable Community Action wiki was to provide a space also for articles which look at topics more from a sustainability perspective.

Sustainability and traditional economics arguments for growth
From the point of view of sustainability it perhaps useful to consider the political implications of what traditional economics has to say rather than just what might appear in dry economic text books.

For example the predicted consequences of a lack of economic growth may strike politicians as extremely frightening. As countries generally tend to experience at least some population growth, if the economy does not also grow this inevitably leads to a decline in standards of living per head of the population. In the past at least the politcal consequneces of unemployment either nationally or even just locally, have not been trivial.

In a world economy which grows, any country without growth will "fall behind", even if only in comparative terms, and politicians are perhaps not unaware of economic power being equated with political power.

Sustainability and 'new' economics
Of course there are alternative views, but arguably these have not as yet made huge inroads. So, for example, in the UK Sustainability indicators may be produced alongside more traditional measures of success such as GDP (Gross domestic product), but arguably national and more local decisions are still made with a view to at least not threatening economic growth rather a broader picture of quality of life.

It's interesting that in the run up to May 2006 local elections politicains of the main UK political parties are wishing to present themselves as 'greener than thou', see for example BBC news story: Chancellor Gordon Brown saying protecting the environment can boost rather than hinder economic growth.

Sustainability and economics in the future
Even the views of traditional economists may alter in the future with developments such as changes in the price of oil. A recurrent question seems to be can those promoting sustainability find any common cause with those seeking economic wellbeing? Rather than a fixation on the amount of economic change, is it possible to ask what kinds of (eg less energy and resource intensive) economic growth or wellbeing are more compatible with sustainability?

Related topics

 * New Start editorial April 19 2006