The prime minister of Canada Stephen Harper says, ‘No country is going to undertake actions on climate change, no matter what they say, that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth.’ (The Daily Telegraph 12/6/14)
Then there needs to be closer examination of ‘jobs and growth’. In a potentially green economy that occupies a post-industrial world, there is no such thing as unemployment. Similarly, there is no ‘growth’, for the whole thing becomes a Steady State Economy where the current population and future generations are supplied but there is no surplus; no profit.
World leaders currently lack imagination. Albert Einstein commented, ‘Imagination is more important than knowledge.’
Jobs and growth currently revolve around the excessive use of energy which leads inevitably to a dead planet. A Steady State Economy comes to terms not with the need for energy, but with the neediness of its citizens.
Employment/unemployment, as now, in a Steady State Economy is linked to the needs of its citizens. As needs reduce to those just required by humans rather than machines, so excessive toil and the need to be employed reduces; something the Industrial Revolution was never able, or likely, to produce.
Geoff Dawe, Uki
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
