Tucson Citizen.com

Sustainable Tucson: Prosperity Without Growth – What does it look like?

by on May. 14, 2012, under Economy, Sustainability

Tonight’s Sustainable Tucson meeting will feature local experts discussing Sustainable Economics. How do we create a sustainable thriving economy without growth? Engage with the people planning a sustainable future for all.

May Sustainable Tucson General Meeting
Monday, May 14th
6:00 pm
Joel D. Valdez Main Library
101 N. Stone, Downtown (free lower level parking off Alameda St)

From the Sustainable Tucson website:
Prosperity Without Growth – What does it look like?

Please join us at Sustainable Tucson’s May meeting to hear local experts talk about Sustainable Economics, and share your thoughts about what this looks like and what it entails. Help us engage the planners with solutions appropriate to our time.

Planning efforts in Tucson (including Imagine Greater Tucson) assume growth to be inevitable and good.

Until recently, there was no reason to question that belief. With a seemingly endless supply of resources and space to dump waste products, there was no feedback raising our awareness, nor reason to ask questions.

Now, however, the pinch has begun. The high carbon energy fuels upon which we have built our modern civilization are not only becoming more problematic to supply, but the effects of their combustion are destabilizing the climate, decimating biodiversity, disrupting food security and beginning to affect social cohesion. The problem is the result of the collective impact of our human species. Our numbers have increased to the point where our resource consumption and related waste is beyond the planetary ecosystem’s ability to continue to supply and absorb them.

If the planet were our house, the debt we have accumulated is coming due, foreclosure is on the horizon, and we may soon lose our home.

Ecological economist Herman Daly notes that growth can become “uneconomic” when the “bads” accumulate faster than the “goods”, the “illth” faster than the wealth.

What are the alternatives to Growth?
What positive vision can lead us away from the “inevitable”?

Doors open at 5:30 pm.
The meeting will begin promptly at 6:00 pm.



  • Carolyn_Classen

    About 60 people there tonight to view 2 film clips and listen to several speakers discuss sustainability, food  distribution, growth, transportation, global warming, water resources, etc.  No clear solutions to all of this, but at least this group is working towards consideration of these issues. With 7 billion people on this finite Earth, sustainable economics is the way of the future.

  • Your_Uncle_Karl

    Hard to imagine a capitalism without constant expansion into new markets and the continual adaptation of new technologies in search for more and greater profits and yet no “growth”, however it might be defined for the purposes of discussion.  I have to say, I’m skeptical, but I wish them well.  A basic tenet of the other of the world’s great systems of social organization is that capitalism is incompatible with a non-exploitative approach to resources, whether they be human or material resources.