Obsolescence, useful life extension and new educational concepts: The economy needs repair!

Abstract

Previous efforts to stabilize sustainable development not only failed, but sometimes even caused additional environmental problems. This grandiose failure in particular is due to the fact that, instead of overcoming the growth paradigm, the easy and politically opportune path of ecological modernization has been taken. According to this, the throughput of industrial added value should not be reduced. On the contrary, it should be decoupled from environmental damage by ecological efficiency as well as closed material cycles and the use of renewable resources. First of all a reference to so-called rebound effects (Paech in Liberation from excess. Munich, 2012) is necessary in order to recognize why this strategy is theoretically doomed to fail. An even deeper look into the logic of systematic sustainability deficits reveals the temporal and material depreciation of a growing flow of goods: This steady devaluation has gradually taken the place of preserving property inventories.