I wrote : '"degrowth" is just demanding that people in developing countries not be permitted to improve their quality of life, that Westerners race to an arbitrary bottom to worsen theirs, and put lives at risk.'
This is meant to be an and/or for the first two. I hope that's clear.
> Our current model of economic growth is clearly and demonstrably catastrophic.
This is a mantra or truism, but there's no reason to believe this. It's also why "degrowthers" themselves are pivoting in their messaging. GDP growth does not scale 1:1 with resource extraction. Between technological innovation and the aggressive pivot to renewables, blaming "the model" stops making sense.
> A nation's economic growth is not equivalent to improved quality of life of individual people living in poverty.
Improved quality of life for impoverished countries depends on it, which isn't the same as saying they're equivalent.
The percentage of people on earth living in extreme poverty as defined by the UN has been diminishing for decades. This is because of growth.
> You need to look at income distribution, costs of living, availability of basic services such as healthcare, human rights etc etc.
If a country is poor as fuck, these are all a moot point. The bottom rung of countries will have worse quality of life regardless of distribution scheme.
> Why are you defining it as perpetual population growth, or lack thereof?
Tautology. Lack of sustainability by definition implies a scenario, not unlike the Malthusian argument, that there is a perfectly linear upward trajectory for land encroachment, resource extraction and emissions (which will lead to exhaustion of one resource or another, or ecological collapse).
The reality is it's a curve. The upward trajectory is temporary, there's zero reason to believe in some scenario where resources and land are completely exhausted; no prediction model suggests that.
We need short-run solutions, surely, because climate is an imperative problem in the near-term. That's what the shift to renewables and investment in innovation is for, and the Green New Deal spin from re-grouped degrowthers is starting to sound a lot like that anyway.
> Regardless of what your techno-optimistic hopes for future miraculous technological breakthroughs might tell you. They aren't coming. It's over.
lol emissions are a solved problem, there's no miracle necessary.
The lingering issue will be climate, not strictly speaking CO2 emissions.
> There's no aggressive transmission to renewables happening in the transportation sector.
Large transport is more difficult to abate, but that is still happening, yes. Hydrogen and nuclear.
> greater emitter per capita
Total emissions matter most. Canada has high emissions per capita but it has a population a fraction of the size of the US, and very spread out, so per capita tells you very little.
> we have no right to point any fingers.
I argue that developing countries are within their right to increase emissions to improve their quality of life.