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mhornberger t1_jbg88et wrote

Reply to comment by SandAndAlum in Reviewing the U.S. solar panel value chain manufacturing capacity. Following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), an energized solar industry is aiming high and envisioning a future where the U.S. has a robust domestic energy supply chain. by mafco

> Which is the degrowth premise... well done. You got there.

Condescension is not fruitful here. Degrowth is not the mere recognition that we were never going to build infinite anything, or have infinite people. Not because we have to stop growth now, but because growth was never going to go to literal infinity. That's not a thing.

>Growth needs to end because it's physically impossible.

That's like saying we need to stop growing food now because it's physically impossible to have infinite food. That I shouldn't try to cure an illness or avoid death today, since it's impossible to live for infinite time. We should stop making light bulbs, because we can't have infinite light bulbs or infinite light. I can't believe people are so dumb as to think we can have infinity light bulbs! Except they don't, and it's a dumb argument. "We need to stop growing, because you can't grow to infinity" doesn't make any sense. The clause after the comma, after the "because," doesn't have any connection to the need to deliberately stop growth now.

Just like "you have to die eventually, so you should die today" doesn't make any sense. It's a given that humans will go extinct eventually, and the sun will stop shining eventually, and the earth will be sterile eventually.

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SandAndAlum t1_jbg95il wrote

Now you're trying to play semantic games by switching out the meaning of the word growth. Seems like the condescension was validated.

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mhornberger t1_jbg9xqj wrote

No, light bulbs are a decent proxy for economic output. Their purchase and use track with economic development, literacy (kids can study after the sun goes down), energy use, and population size. As does food production, scaling as it does with population, though it can be reduced per capita with technological improvements.

And yes, I have seen degrowthers lament declines in infant mortality, and agricultural improvements like the green revolution, precisely because they led to population increase.

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SandAndAlum t1_jbgdazz wrote

More semantic games. Making a thing or agriculture isn't exponential growth. Neither is a bounded increase in consumption in only those places with poor quality of life. Straw men are also not relevant.

Have a read of your comments there and reflect on how disgusting and disingenuous they are.

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