The End of Growth
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In an urgent follow-up to his best-selling Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller, Jeff Rubin argues that the end of cheap oil means the end of growth. What it will be like to live in a world where growth is over?
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Economist and resource analyst Jeff Rubin is certain that the world's governments are getting it wrong. Instead of moving us toward economic recovery, measures being taken around the globe right now are digging us into a deeper hole. Both politicians and economists are missing the fact that the real engine of economic growth has always been cheap, abundant fuel and resources. But that era is over. The end of cheap oil, Rubin argues, signals the end of growth—and the end of easy answers to renewing prosperity.
Rubin's own equation is clear: with China and India sucking up the lion's share of the world's ever more limited resources, the rest of us will have to make do with less. But is this all bad? Can less actually be more? Rubin points out that there is no research to show that people living in countries with hard-charging economies are happier, and plenty of research to show that some of the most contented people on the planet live in places with no-growth or slow-growth GDPs. But it doesn't matter whether it's bad or good, it's the new reality: our world is not only about to get smaller, our day-to-day lives are about to be a whole lot different.
Liked The End of Growth? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked The End of Growth. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
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The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality Shares economics, nonfiction, energy -
The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment Shares economics, nonfiction, environment -
The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World Shares energy, economics, nonfiction -
Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent Shares nonfiction, environment, energy
“People who read The End of Growth tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (economics about environment), start with these.”
“If it was the energy that hooked you, try one of these.”
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Oil on the Brain: Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline
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The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth
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Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy
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The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, The Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”
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Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
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The End of Normal: Why the Growth Economy Isn't Coming Back-and What to Do When It Doesn't
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An Extraordinary Time: The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
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Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies