Opinion: Food self-sufficiency is a recipe for disaster financialpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from financialpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
We wish to thank Dr. Giorgios Kallis for his wide-ranging response to our lead essay and for his collegiate tone. Kallis writes that “The problem now is not resource scarcity, but damage to the environment (e.g., biodiversity).” He notes that “Resource use grows hand in hand with GDP, even in service economies like the US or the UK where economists expected reductions,” and he advocates in favor of “degrowth.” Finally, Kallis believes that “satisfactory levels of wellbeing can be achieved at a fraction of the highest national incomes.”
The focus on environmental damage as a by-product of population growth, economic growth, and growth in consumption has a long pedigree. In 1982, for example, a group of ecological economists met in Stockholm and published a manifesto warning of natural limits on human activity. “Ecological economists distinguished themselves from neo-Malthusian catastrophists by switching the emphasis from resources to systems,” wrote one histor