I have succumbed to temptation with the title of this post. While I hesitate to attract the label of being “alarmist”, by the time I had finished contemplating the four reports which are the subject of this blog, I was very alarmed. So please allow me the liberty of an attention-grabbing title.  The best thing for me to do is to tell you about the four reports and then you can decide how much hyperbole is contained in my use of the word “apocalypse”.  I introduce them in the order in ...

I will leave why growth should stop until later in this post and will start with why growth must stop. Not everyone agrees that growth must stop; in my experience most of those who argue that growth can go on forever are economists. As Kenneth Boulding (himself an economist) put it: Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. I have not taken a straw poll on this, but I suspect that there would be a divide between physical sci...

At the time of writing this blog we are in the very early stages of developing our seminar. We have the idea, a title, and an organizing committee, but no sponsorship, no budget, no date and only the beginnings of a possible program - and only one speaker. Before we can identify additional speakers and build a program we need to find out who is active in the area, or in closely related areas and what ideas have already been developed. In other words we (the organizing committee) are on a jour...

The idea to organize a seminar on the policy implications of the end of economic growth was inspired by Paul Gilding's excellent book The Great Disruption. Paul writes of his expectation that some day (soon, he hopes) a political tide will develop which demands real action on climate change; a groundswell which regards the current objective of limiting climate change to an average temperature increase of no more than 2ºC as being grossly inadequate. When this hoped for day comes, Paul though...