Re: Degrowth and regrowth.
As Richard Whitley says (July 6, “Worst case”), Japan is facing a tanking birthrate and an increasingly aged population, and this was not achieved in a stable and controlled manner.
However it is not, as he claims, a worst-case scenario, just a difficult one. It has to happen, however you try to control it. Falling birthrates will mean an aging population, with economic and social consequences, but it’s a passing phase: the old die faster than the young, and the situation rebalances in the long term.
You can’t fight that with ongoing growth in a fixed world and a diminishing ecology, but the energy of the workforce in the developed world can support the old rather more, and produce junk rather less, while we all consume less, working towards a demographic balance, and an environmental one, and much closer equality among the nations.
Gavin Maclean
