clv101 wrote:The answer is obviously 'it depends'!
If we're talking about mine, yours and pretty much everyone else's 'quality of life' in the UK. It would be better, desirable, for the UK to grow at 1% per year for the next 5 years than to contract a 1% per year for the next five years.
However, if we're talking about the planetary ecosystem's ability to maintain biodiversity, and indeed a long term, lower impact, human civilisation to boot, a 90% collapse in economic activity followed shortly after by a similar population crash would be desirable.
Yes, it depends.
I'll offer a third branch of your "it depends".
What about "quality of life" in the UK and/or north-west Europe in the longer-term future (within the lifetime of children born now)?
This is not merely a choice between what is good for us, right here, right now, in the UK, and what is good for the non-human global ecosystem. Even if you accept that much of the human world is doomed, it does not follow that the more socially and politically advanced parts of the northern hemisphere are doomed, not least because we're far less susceptible to the consequences of climate change to some of the less socially and politically advanced parts. You might argue that is unfair, but it is the reality regardless.
It comes down to a question about whether it is ethically justifiable to try to hold on to the best of human social and cultural creations in a circumpolar northern enclave + various outlying places like Australasia and Japan, while Africa and the Middle East go to hell without passing Go.
