Module 2.1 Economic Growth

(Development in progress)

Introduction

The economic history of the world can be shown as a hockey stick graph.  This is a long relatively flat line followed by an exponential rise like the blade of a hockey stick.  The stick represents the Malthusian trap, in which improvements in technology are consumed by rising population, and standards of living remain relatively stagnant.  Then things change in the early 19th century with the advent of the industrial revolution, and we see the blade represent a sudden dramatic increase in growth.  The problem is that this growth was largely the result of carbon use - coal and oil especially.  Now we are dealing with the consequences of carbon use. 

Learning objectives

• • Understand engineering interactions with the economy
• • Understand science and technology interactions with culture (values, attitudes, beliefs)
• • Explain sustainable design and development
• • Explain the link between politics and policy

Required reading (372)

• • Clark (2008) A Short Economic History of the World
• • Wallace-Wells (2019) Elements of Chaos - Economic Collapse
• • Canada’s Plan for Climate Change and Clean Growth

Other links and references (374)

• • Gore (2013) deeply flawed economic compass (trend 4)
• • GDP numbers are flawed and deceptive (Jerven, 2014; Fioramonte, 2013) 
• • Pool (1997) how society shapes technology
• • Urquhart (2018) government inflated profitability of tar sands by policy; see also Turner (2013) on role of science, rejection of evidence
• • Carbon money fighting the facts: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/15/leak-exposes-heartland-institute-climate  plus role of Heartland Institute,  For an analogy, see the movie Thank you for Smoking (Jason Reitman, 2005) 
• • Bunker (2018) Mythology of Global Warming, Dark Money… Ponzi economics (Clarke, 1997) and hidden externalities (cf. Urquhart, 2018) 

Presentations

Lecture 1

The first lecture will situate the industrial revolution and growing use of carbon in the economic history of the world, and then describe successive revolutions in the forms of capitalism from industrial to post-industrial, financial, and information capitalism.  We will line these up with revolutions in military technology, and also advise caution about assumptions of technological ascendancy.  

Link to the slides 

Lecture 2

The second lecture considers the role of the carbon economy in producing economic growth and what Clark (2008) refers to as the “great divergence”.  The debate about the role of the carbon economy in climate change has been obscured by oil company profits and deliberate misinformation.  National efforts to address climate change are hampered by the political importance of growth, and the relative insignificance of individual small-country contributions to a global problem. Trade-offs between short-term economic growth and long-term climate costs have made this a particularly difficult political problem.  The green-energy technology  revolution is held up as the answer to this problem. We will explore this 

Link to the slides

Seminar (for POE374, optional for POE372)

The seminar will address growth and climate change as a policy problem in Canada, particularly the current debate about a green recovery from the COVID pandemic. Our starting point will be the Government of Canada plan for Climate Change and Clean Growth.  The Blog EcoJustice provides links to compare federal political party policies on climate change, along with a commentary.

Going into the 2019 election, the Conservative Party of Canada proposed A Real Plan to Protect our Environment  

The New Democratic Party put forward the climate plan, Power to Change: a new deal for climate action and good jobs. 

The Green Party proposed Mission Possible - the Green Climate Action Plan

We will treat this as a policy debate, looking for common ground, and the consequences of the lowest common denominator.