Obama's Science Adviser Called for "Zero Economic Growth"

[jakeXT]

Friday, July 31, 2009
By Christopher Neefus

1977 textbook "Ecoscience" by John Holdren and Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich
(CNSNews.com) – At a time when it was popular among environmentalists to talk about capping pollutants, John Holdren was writing about placing “caps” on the U.S. economy itself--and working toward “zero economic growth.”

Holdren, who is now President Obama’s top adviser on science and technology policy, wrote in the 1970s that it would be “entirely logical” to cap the Gross National Product--the total productivity of the American economy.

“It is by now abundantly clear that the GNP cannot grow forever. Why should it?” Holdren asked in a 1977 college science textbook he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich, titled “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment.”

“Why should we not strive for zero economic growth (ZEG) as well as zero population growth?”

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=51809




So by looking at alternative GDP numbers, the economy was eating itself over the last decade, not growing.
And where would population growth be without immigration?

Zero growth would be an increase I guess.

[pnorman]

1. Bear in mind that CNSNews is an explicitly right-wing outfit.

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That's not to dismiss it out of hand, but keep it in mind whenever reading their analyses or opinion pieces.

pnorman

[Bigmack]

2. Infinite growth in a finite system,

IS, as I have said many times before, a logical impossibility. As is the possibility of the rest of the world consuming on current US consumption standards. So, the logical consequence of THAT is..... Ms Bigmack