The Delusion of Perpetual Economic Growth

Fairy Tales of Growth

Directed by Pierre Smith Khanna (2019

Film Review

This documentary is about the urgent need to abolish the mindset that measures human progress in terms of economic growth. It also emphasizes the price we pay for growth in terms of heavy resource extraction and even heavier human exploitation.

The filmmakers begin by referencing Limits of Growth, published by the elite round table group Club of Rome published in 1973. Relying on MIT computer modeling, it predicted unrestrained growth would lead to economic and ecological collapse in the early decades of the the the 21st century.

The film makes many of the same points as Michael Moore’s recent documentary Planet of the Humans (see The Corporatization of the Climate Movement). Both depict the notion of “Green Growth” as a corporate scam. Politicians and environmental NGOs who claim that a switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy will allow unlimited economic growth without causing irreparable harm to the planet are either deluded or deliberately lying to you.

Both films films assert our only option, at this point, for preventing environmental collapse is  to significantly reduce consumption and to prioritize human welfare and the environment over the continual acquisition of more stuff.

The filmmakers cite an interesting study revealing that every new purchase gives people an average of 15 minutes of happiness. In fact, a growing number of psychologists and sociologists believe improve if we focus away from material possessions to to improve health care and education, spending more time with our families, and rebuild our communities.

For me, the high point of the documentary is the link it makes between our debt-based system of money creation and the pressure for ever increasing economic growth. Contrary to public belief, at present 97% is created, not by government, by by private banks when they issue loans. (See We Need to End Money Creation by Private Banks – Urgently)

Because money only comes into existence when someone borrows money, the only way to keep enough money circulating in the economy is to continually increase (both private and government) debt. The cost of repaying this exponentially increasing debt is a continual increase in resource extraction, environmental degradation and pollution, and exploitation.