What Is "Old" Is "New" (Or "Sioux")

The BBC, providing free advertising “reporting” on a “report” which “investigated” whether it is even possible to battle “climate change,” composed by a group calling itself The New Economics Foundation (a name which, presumably, is not meant to evoke recollections of Lenin’s “New Economic Policy”):

…None of the existing models or policies could “square the circle” of economic growth with climate safety…

…In the report, Growth Isn’t Possible, the authors looked at the main models for climate change and energy use in the global economy…

And the “report” came to the conclusion that economic growth is — as if its title didn’t give it away? — out of the question if we are simultaneously serious about arresting “climate change.”  Still, all is not hopeless.  There is perhaps one way forward:

…The report concluded an economy that respected environmental thresholds, which include biodiversity and the finite availability of natural resources, would be better placed to deliver human well-being in the long run…

The BBC did not share with us any historical example from the NEF “report” of a “better placed” economy which had.  Despite that unfortunate oversight, this blog immediately thought of one possibility.  And in the absence of any others, it could well serve as something of a model — although, it is of course also arguable as to whether it really did indeed “deliver” widespread economic “well-being in the long run”:

But assuming for the sake of argument that the Sioux managed it, and despite what that NEF “report” calls for, precisely how 7 billion people will subsist almost entirely off hunting — especially when hunting is increasingly judged beyond the moral pale — is difficult readily to envisage.

And especially when, as USA Today tells us:

Among 21 social and economic issues, global warming ranks last as a top priority to Americans, who view it as increasingly less urgent, according to a survey released Monday by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press…

For if we can but only rarely in life assert “the politics is settled,” the above certainly looks as if “the politics” preclude any effort anytime soon to implement a global return to hunting and gathering.

[Via http://atlanticcrossings.wordpress.com]