Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Santiago Roncagliolo: I suppose that the ultimate limit is finishing with this planet. But I don't know if we are capable to understand it. I suppose that things we don't see don't hurt us much, that it is very difficult how people see ecology because the ecological damage is very difficult to see, the damage in the ozone layer or the arctic poles, or the changes in temperature are very difficult to perceive, and to perceive them as a political problem, and that we have some sort of responsibility. Maybe in any political field it is necessary to create conscience that there is a problem. And maybe in the ecological issue, it is more difficult for the people to get this conscience as the problem doesn't seem to be an immediate threat.

by Santiago Roncagliolo

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Shaobin Yang:

by Shaobin Yang

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Sihem Bensedrine: There are many ways to achieve an economic growth which respects the ecological limits. And its possible to respect these limits if those who govern take the decision to respect an ecological limit and as they oblige everybody to respect this limit and you will see that the industrie is perfectly able to conform to this limit without putting at risk its growth at all.

by Sihem Bensedrine

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Sima Wali: Yes, I believe that when you have the economy as the primary concern, then you have to serve it. We need to make a shift in that thinking, and we need to make sure that our environment is basically taken care of, that we have to -- in addition to the creation of wealth in free markets, we have to look at the social ills and the ecological ills that it creates, and we need to address that. We’ve reached a stage in the world today that we are suffering largely from ecological abuse of the land.

by Sima Wali

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Simon Retallack: I think there is an ecological limit. Economic growth is based on industrial development. I think we live -- it's obvious to say we live on a planet with finite resources and a finite capacity to absorb waste. There's no way around that; and if you carry on growing your economy in a way that uses up your natural resources -- obviously we’re seeing that with fossil fuels -- and that uses up the carrying capacity of the atmosphere, for example, to absorb all of our pollution, we will provoke ecological crises of such magnitude that industrial development as we know it will come to an end. And, therefore, there is an ecological limit to this. If we continue along the current path of fossil fuel based industrial development, I think of course there are ways of producing energy that involve renewable forms of energy: the sun, wind, that are infinite in nature. But, nonetheless, those have to be produced and there are other resources that can't be renewed and -- particularly water. We're reducing our supplies of fresh water at such a rate that huge sections of the planet face significant water scarcity in coming decades, unless we realize that we have to treat water as a valued common good that has to be used much more efficiently than it is today. And, therefore, I think we need to readjust our economic priorities wherever we are in -- wherever people find themselves in positions of influence in economic ministries. The objective of increasing economic growth for economic growth’s sake should no longer be the overriding priority of policy here. The policies that should govern or influence decisions should be those that serve the interests, the true interests, of people and the environment; and where they conflict with economic growth, I'm afraid they must take priority.

by Simon Retallack

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Sohrab Mahdavi: The earth is a closed system and many ecological disasters have already taken place historically. That's not unique to our day and age.

by Sohrab Mahdavi

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Song Kosal: Yes. Economic growth should not at the expense of the damage of nature.

by Song Kosal

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Steve Earle: Absolutely. There's no--our economic system is rooted so firmly in the existence of real estate and there's only so much land, and there's only so much space on the surface of the earth that you can only sell the same piece of land over and over again so many times. So that puts economic limits on development. And then there is a point at which you have to make a decision between quality of life and being able to continue to make money. The idea that a piece of property that you buy is--that you have an inherent right continuing to increase the property and the value of that property by turning it over and over and over again. But there's a point in cities that that becomes unsustainable because there just is only so much, there's only so many people you can squeeze into a square mile of land. There's only so much oxygen in the world. You can only cut down so many trees and still provide for people to be able to breathe; carbon dioxide emissions from organisms and from machinery that we built that emits CO2 as well. There's a limit. There is a definite limit that is finite, and we are nearing it.

by Steve Earle

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Sulak Sivaraksa: This number is also related to number 51 and 50. Obviously, we must limit economic growth, because without limiting economic growth that growth will endanger natural resources, it will endanger everything, because ecological balance is very important. And now it become less and less balanced, so we must limit ecological unbalance. We must take care of nature in the way that we take care of ourselves. Many people don’t even take care of themselves. They use their body, their mind, everything for success, for economic success, for political success. I think that is a great pity. We should change our way of thinking. We should really change our way of living in order to care more for economic -- not for economic but for ecological balance.

by Sulak Sivaraksa

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Susan George: Well, that’s the easiest question we have had so far. The answer is unequivocally, yes. There’s absolutely no debate about this. Everybody who is thinking about these questions in the slightest understands that we have reached those limits already and that we are looking at the biosphere in entirely the wrong way. If you just look at the sky above us, that’s all it takes to see that we are living in nature. Our economy does not encompass the biosphere. We are behaving as if it did. So, let’s say our economy is like a box. And, the way our economy behaves is that we think we have got the biosphere in it like a circle, and we can just take out what resources we need and then throw away into that whatever we want to use, as pollution, and heat, and waste. But, we can’t do that because in fact we are living inside the sphere of the biosphere, and we can’t increase its size by 1 cubic centimeter. It’s going to stay the size it is. And our economy is getting bigger and bigger, and that box is moving out towards the sphere. And, pretty soon the corners of that box are going to pierce the delicate membrane of this sphere. So, it is absolute folly to keep on going as we are doing. I like what Kenneth Boulding used to say, the late ecological economist, who said, “to believe that something can grow infinitely you’ve either got to be crazy or an economist. It’s not healthy for humans to grow infinitely. If we did, I mean, people will get giantosis, that’s -- it's an illness, and we are in a stage of illness for our economy.

by Susan George

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Swami Pragyapad: You know, in ecology everything is a cycle. And the faster we are able to recycle things, the faster we are able to recycle the water, the faster we are able to recycle the air, the faster we are able to recycle our resources, the faster we will be able to keep up with the economic growth which is happening. If we are not able to recycle whatever resources we are using up at a quick pace, definitely we will reach a limit, sooner or later, where our economic growth is also going to be hampered. So we need to devise more ways, newer ways to learn to recycle the resources, which we have. Recycle the iron. Recycle the water. Recycle the air. Recycle everything, because that is the principle of nature. In nature everything is recycled: air, water, gas. Everything is recycled. And we need to find out concrete ways, newer prospectives, have newer ideas, as to how we can recycle whatever can be recycled. So the economic growth will depend on how much we are able to recycle.

by Swami Pragyapad

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Sydney Possuelo: Yes. There are ecological limits for our growth. So we have to think prudently about why we are getting to a limit of raw materials. Our economical growth has a limit concerning the ecological utilization. While we are living and surviving on earth, it has also a limit of supportability.

by Sydney Possuelo

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Takashi Kiuchi: Absolutely yes. And we have made so much mistakes in assuming that endless growth was possible. It is not. So, we must put a lid on the Keynesian Economics, for instance. Because in Keynesian Economics encourages to do more and more. It is not only the ecological limit. The actual limit that we have to our economic growth is more than ecological limits.

by Takashi Kiuchi

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Tamas St. Auby: The ecological limit itself will limit the oniomania and pleonexia which produces all the luxuriating, devastating, irrational so-called growth. But it is understandable that ecological limit is decided by ourselves, since the ecologic limit is part of man also. Somehow, the ecological limit is at the forbidden tree. We can go through, we can pick up the prohibited, forbidden fruit, but then we went through the border of the limit.

by Tamas St. Auby

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Tania Bruguera: I don't think that there is an ecological limit to economic growth. I think that -what exists- is the necessity to begin with transformations... . I think that -what exsits- is not a limit, but an appeal. So, I think that when the economy yet begins to affect the ecology, we have to treat it like an appeal of attention and so not to stop the economic growth, but to search for solutions and transformations that are possible to realize that one thing does not affect the other. I think that always - you know- always we have seen that when we arrived at the economic level, it affected each other. This epoch has been very advanced ... every ecologic confrontation. Almost always there has been a solution for the economical growth. Concerning the trees we have to create a different type of wood which isn't a real kind of wood but a product which could be used a derivative of wood which wasn't used before. This is that I believe that every situation that we thought is a limit, could be solved by creative solutions that don't damage. At the economic level, we have to make the materials with methods that don't affect the ecology.

by Tania Bruguera

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Tavis Smiley:

by Tavis Smiley

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Tegla Loroupe: Answertext will be available soon.

by Tegla Loroupe

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Thenmozhi Soundararajan:

by Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Sep 9, 2006 2:15:00 PM cite

Timothy Speed: I am really convinced that there is a limit to growth. For me the question is not so much if we should deal with questions as: How can we create more growth? Do we need more growth? Is growth an essential element for economy anyway? For me it is more important to ask: How can we develop more creative power? If you succeed to integrate more creative power into society than you have a different form of [employment] than one searching for economic growth. The conditions, which are necessary to integrate creative power in society, provide generally more human or individual meaning or assessment or emphasis in economy than allowing economy to be an end in itself. This means an economy, which has growth as its only aim. I think that the question if we need economic growth, is a question, which is generally misleading, because we have an economy, which is facing a huge change. An economy, which became doubtful in many aspects, which is not serving the people or reasonableness and which is no longer successful in its strategies. The question is more: What is the basis for values? What is the basis for dynamic processes in society? What is it that makes us successful? What makes society strong and dynamic? What creates expressions which are interesting, strong and powerful? These are the foundations of society. And for me personally it is really a question about the inside. Are we going back to what is really important or do we get lost over the outside.

by Timothy Speed