A post-growth society for the 21st century. Does prosperity have to wait for the return of economic growth?

Date:: 20 March 2014
Speaker:: Lucas Chancel and Alex Bowen
Venue:: The Vera Anstey Room, Old Building, LSE

Synopsis: The Grantham Research Institute hosted a policy seminar in collaboration with IDDRI. Lucas Chancel presented the key findings of A post-growth society for the 21st century by IDDRI. The report attempts to answer the two following questions in the context of increasing energy prices and the need for sharp CO2 emission reductions:

Can we have any certainty about the future of growth?

Assuming that the coming decades will be a period of weak growth fluctuating between an annual 1% growth and a stagnant GDP, can we still prosper?

Lucas was joined by Alex Bowen, Principal Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute and CCCEP, who offered a response to Lucas’ presentation, drawing on a complementary paper (co-authored with Cameron Hepburn) Prosperity with growth: economic growth, climate change and environmental limits.

Presentations were followed by a question and answer session.