The Economics of Destruction

Join Dr. Peter Carter, Paul Beckwith and Regina Valdez as they discuss our destructive economy and the need to transform it into an economy of peace.

This video was recorded on February 25th, 2022, and published on March 5th, 2022.

Some of the topics discussed:

• The book called ‘The Limits to Growth’ published in 1972 and a reanalysis in 2020 by Gaya Herrington published in Yale’s Journal of Industrial Ecology.
• How The Limits to Growth analysis highlights the importance of understanding the interaction of multiple factors and how Gaya’s reanalysis, with the benefit of the available climate data, has put us ahead of the originally forecasted collapse.
• The question of whether there is an economics of peace is posed and juxtaposed to the current economy of destruction with its mutually assured destruction through the building and maintenance of nuclear arsenals.
• The fact that there have been journal papers published on the ‘Economics of Peace.’
• The principles of Buddhist Economics as developed by Ernst Friedrich (Fritz) Schumacher are brought up as well as his book called ‘Small is Beautiful.’
• The question of ‘where are our peace colleges?’ is raised.
• The idea of reassigning the engineers working to develop weapons systems to working on climate change solutions.
• How economic models use the concept of value and the need to more heavily weight the value of future generations in 50 and 100 years in these models. The fact that we don’t put any or enough value on items such as the environment, in which there is an implicit but unrecognized value, is a ‘Tragedy of the Commons.’
• How war is essentially organized murder.
• How Russia, who is attacking Ukraine, is a petrol state with 60% of its exports consisting of fossil fuels.
• How our destructive economy is a ‘root’ stressor.
• How we’re not even going to begin to deal with the climate emergency until we change our economics.
• and more. . .

Links:

• YouTube: Online Talk 2021-10-06: Civilization’s Window of Opportunity - Lessons for valuing our ecosystem

• Comparing the rise and fall of empires

• The Limits to Growth

• Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970’s end-of-the-world prediction

• Data check on the world model that forecast global collapse

• Tragedy of the commons

• International Society for Ecological Economics

• Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered

• Buddhist Economics

• Albert Einstein on Buddhism

• Stockholm Resilience Centre

Regular Panelists:

• Dr. Peter Carter - MD, Expert IPCC Reviewer and the director of the Climate Emergency Institute

• Paul Beckwith - Climate Systems Scientist. Professor at the University of Ottawa’s Paleoclimatology Laboratory as well as at Carleton University

• Regina Valdez - Program Director, Climate Reality Project, NYC. GreenFaith Fellow and LEED Green Associate

Video Production:

• Charles Gregoire – Climate Reality Leader, Electrical Engineer, Webmaster and IT prime for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum

• Heidi Brault - Climate Reality Leader, BA(Psychology), Library & Information Technician Diploma - Video production and website assistant - Organizer and convener, Metadata technician, COP26 Team Lead for FacingFuture.Earth and the Climate Emergency Forum.

Attributions:

Background Music:

• Title: Through the City II
• Author: Crowander
• Source: Free Music Archive
• License: BY-NC 4.0

Image and Video:

• Image and Video Attributions