Article ID: CBB001022690

Can De-Growth Be Considered a Policy Option? A Historical Note on Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the Club of Rome (2010)

unapi

At a few months' interval, Georgescu-Roegen's The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971) and Club of Rome's Limits to Growth (1972) were published. Both emphasized the dangers of economic growth, and both drew negative reactions from mainstream economists. Relying on archival evidence, we show that Georgescu-Roegen and the Club of Rome developed strategies of mutual support, which would present them at first view as natural allies. Georgescu-Roegen actually became a member of the Club of Rome, while Dennis Meadows acknowledged the influence of Georgescu-Roegen's ideas on the team of authors of Limits to Growth. But in the late 70's, the gap widened between Georgescu-Roegen's adamant defense of de-growth, and the Club of Rome's less firm view of sustainable growth. This paper explores the process leading to the self-isolation of Georgescu-Roegen, by showing that beyond a shared acknowledgment that economic and biologic systems were interdependent, technological optimism and ambitions for the global management of growth were central to the Club of Rome, while Georgescu-Roegen's personal history led him to ignore those practicalities and judge that de-growth was inescapable. Keywords: Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen; History of ecological economics; De-growth; Club of Rome

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Authors & Contributors
Bates, David W.
Blanchard, Elodie Vieille
Hartmann, Heinrich
Kruke, Anja
Latorre, Jesus Garcia
Latorre, Juan Garcia
Journals
Archiv für Sozialgeschichte
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Business History Review
Environmental History
Foundations of Chemistry
History of Political Economy
Publishers
University of Pennsylvania
Princeton University Press
Springer International
University of Oklahoma Press
Concepts
Public policy
Economics
Demography; population research
Science and politics
Social sciences
Economic growth
People
Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas
Fisher, Irving
Pareto, Vilfredo
Schmitt, Carl
Thurstone, Louis Leon
Time Periods
20th century
20th century, late
19th century
21st century
18th century
Enlightenment
Places
United States
Great Britain
Soviet Union
India
China
Finland
Institutions
Club of Rome
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT
Chicago School of Economics
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