I was reading the Daly News, a blog about steady state economics, and I found brilliantl the link proposed by the author between ralentless growth and political instability and even war.
It is pretty easy to accept that with growth in consumtion, there is a growing demand in raw materials, and hence in the struggle to satisfy the needs of all. Conflict and rivaly is more common with growth that without, specially when overall scale is like what we have today.
Without being a policital scientist or an expert in geopolitics, we can confirm a relationship of casuality between resource access and political distress: whether is for oil, rare minerals, food or water, the more pressure we put on resource demand, the higher the likelihood of conflicts and rival interests.
It is already happening, and war is far from gone in the world, specially on those countries who are "blessed" with fossil fuels and a lot of natural resources. Currently many of those are treated like colonies or their sobereneity is being challenge, and its invation, claim to be inevitable. Global politics show little interest on tyranian regimes where they lack resources for the anxious global markets.
I think we all should think twice, when pursuing career,materialistic and personal growth, if this is making the world a more peaceful or instead a stressed place.
A very illustrative dicotomy that is showing more and more follows:
"The rich blame the poor of having too many kids in a heavily populated world, while the poor blame the rich to consume too much of the resources".
Instead of taking sides, we should aknowledge that in a world with finite resources and physical laws that makes infite growth a sure path for collapse, there must be limits in both consumption and population growth.
May everyone select if it is on their consumption or family planning their focus, but we should as a whole aim for a less stress world, maximizing freedoms and prosperity across generations.
The image attached shows the planetary boundaries, that as we know, are vital for our existence yet exceeded at an alarming rate. We should focus on this immediately. Shall the planet be healthier without our prosperity, but there is no prosperity without a healthy planet.
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