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Post Carbon Fellow Bill Rees was interviewed by IPS as part of the Copenhagen climate change conference coverage.
From the article:
IPS: Do we have to change the widespread view that economic growth is always a good thing?
WR: There's no question that economic growth is good if you are starting from virtually zero. People need basic food, clothing and shelter. But we see over and over again that as people become wealthier, there is a disconnect between improvements in wellbeing and per capita income. (After income of) something like 10,000 dollars per capita per annum in a country, there's no further general improvement in longevity. You've obtained about 95 percent of the benefits of income growth at a relatively low income level. Similarly, in most high income countries we see no further correlation between felt wellbeing, a personal subjective feeling of how happy we are and our future prospects, and income growth. Most North Americans and many Europeans were happiest in the 1950s and 60s, when incomes were half what they are today. At low levels, extra income enhances your ability to consume the basics of life. But you reach a point where further income actually complicates life and quality of life begins to decline.
If we were really living up to our self-proclaimed capacity as rational beings, the evidence of intelligent life on earth, we would be reorganising the global economy, so that needed growth was taking place in countries where there are significant gains in wellbeing. Growth is simply an increase in the scale; development means an improvement in the quality, and we have seen increasing growth in rich countries but a decline in development. We are dis- developing even as we are growing. It's growth that makes us poorer, rather than richer.
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