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Shrinking the economy won't save the planet
The idea of deliberately reversing economic growth for environmental reasons isn’t backed up by research.
Even mainstream economists will agree that GDP alone doesn’t measure whether a life is meaningful and fulfilling, but they will also point out that as countries get richer, they also get healthier and happier. As soon as you start getting into details, it’s hard to come up with anything that polls worse than a steadily shrinking economy and the end of the conveniences of modern life. I’ve increasingly gotten the sense that the movement’s contributors are effectively in an academic echo chamber, publishing papers that only they read and that don’t address any of the reservations of their critics.
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