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Original Articles

Is Green Growth Possible?

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ABSTRACT

The notion of green growth has emerged as a dominant policy response to climate change and ecological breakdown. Green growth theory asserts that continued economic expansion is compatible with our planet’s ecology, as technological change and substitution will allow us to absolutely decouple GDP growth from resource use and carbon emissions. This claim is now assumed in national and international policy, including in the Sustainable Development Goals. But empirical evidence on resource use and carbon emissions does not support green growth theory. Examining relevant studies on historical trends and model-based projections, we find that: (1) there is no empirical evidence that absolute decoupling from resource use can be achieved on a global scale against a background of continued economic growth, and (2) absolute decoupling from carbon emissions is highly unlikely to be achieved at a rate rapid enough to prevent global warming over 1.5°C or 2°C, even under optimistic policy conditions. We conclude that green growth is likely to be a misguided objective, and that policymakers need to look toward alternative strategies.

Acknowledgement

Kallis's research benefited from support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) under the “María de Maeztu” Unit of Excellence (MDM-2015-0552) and the COSMOS (CSO2017-88212-R) grant.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Jason Hickel is an anthropologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He writes on global inequality, political economy and ecology.

Giorgos Kallis is an ICREA professor at the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology at the Autononomous University of Barcelona, an ecological economist and political ecologist writing on limits to growth.

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