#97 Matt Orsagh: Is There a Case for Degrowth?

Is infinite economic growth compatible with life on a planet with finite resources?

In final episode of Frankly Speaking this year, Richard Howitt was joined by Matt Orsagh, co-founder of the Arketa Institute for Post-Growth Finance and former Senior Director of Capital Markets at the CFA Institute, to confront one of the most controversial questions in sustainability today: is it time to move beyond growth itself?

Together they discussed whether conventional sustainability thinking is no longer enough as well as the Arketa Institute’s latest paper By Disaster or Design. You’ll also hear about:

• Why climate action based on green growth and energy efficiency may actually increase total resource use

• How Jevons Paradox undermines many well-intentioned sustainability strategies

• What the planetary boundaries framework reveals about how close we are to ecological breakdown

• Why decoupling growth from emissions is, in Matt’s view, a mathematical impossibility

• Matt’s belief that prosperity must be redefined beyond GDP and wealth accumulation

• What a post-growth, locally-rooted financial system could look like in practice

• Matt’s perspective on the crucial role of imagination in designing a viable future

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