Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?
I talk about the effects of limiting GDP-style growth on our lifestyle with my wife. We burn a lot of carbon and use a lot of resources traveling, but on the other hand in our day to day life we tend to buy food in bulk at health food stores, try very hard to avoid using plastic, share one fuel efficient car, etc.<p>Our take is that, for the sake of our grandchildren&#x27;s generation and generations beyond that, that we would be willing to reduce our travel, concentrating more on visiting family and friends rather than international travel.<p>The effect has taken years to become noticeable, but not having network TV in our home so we are not deluged with BUY THIS NOW commercials for stuff we don’t need has helped us to avoid buying stuff we really don’t need.<p>As a society, if we invested more in libraries, public parks, venues for entertainment, science and education, etc. then I think we would be better off than embracing a more material world&#x2F;life style.<p>Everyone gets to make their own decisions, so for my preferences to be achieved, we would need to stop corporate socializism and make consumers pay the real costs for goods. An example would be to remove the $50b per year water subsidies for the beef industry, and make consumers pay for the approximately 4000 gallons of water required to produce a pound of meat in the grocery store.