To Grow or Not to Grow: Evolution of the Economic Paradigm as a Response to Climate Disruption

Abstract

Climate and environmental hazards make the current phase of growth increasingly uneconomic-its costs overshadow its benefits. Furthermore, it is also becoming apparent that Western societies have already crossed the line marking the correlation between certain levels of income and an increase of subjective wellbeing (Frey in Happiness: A Revolution in Economics. MIT Press, Cambridge, 2008; Frey in Economics of Happiness. Springer, Cham, 2018). On the one hand, economists emphasize the need to find policies for controlling climate change that optimize the trade-off between climate damages and lost opportunities for consumption or economic development; on the other, the scale of the environmental consequences of the present growth paradigm leads to the collapse of the major economic consensus linking economic growth per capita with human well-being and social cohesion.