El crecimiento económico afecta a todas las esferas: social, económica, política... El sistema actual asocia este crecimiento con el progreso y bienestar, relación cuestionada habitualmente por los críticos del capitalismo. En palabras del profesor de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Carlos Taibo:.
El intento de promover el crecimiento económico por encima de cualquier otra consideración mensurable es un síntoma de lo que se conoce como productivismo, un término que se suele utilizar en tono despectivo.
The limits to growth
The limits to growth debate is about the ecological impact of growth and the creation of wealth and progress. Many of the activities necessary for economic growth make use of non-renewable energy sources. Many researchers believe that these continued environmental effects may in turn have an effect on global ecosystems.
This impact on the environment is what the ecological footprint tries to quantify. Thus, for the year 2005 the number of global hectares (bioproductive hectares) per person was estimated at 2.1. However, for the entire world, consumption stood at 2.7. Therefore, at least for this year (and the trend is increasing, since in 2003 the global ecological footprint was estimated at 2.23), we were over-consuming with respect to the planet's capacity; In other words, we are destroying resources at a speed greater than their natural regeneration rate.
They claim that the cumulative effects on ecosystems impose a theoretical limit on growth. Some turn to archeology to cite examples of cultures that seem to have disappeared because they grew beyond the capacity of their ecosystems to house them, as Duncan claims, for example, will also happen with our civilization (Olduvai Theory). His prediction is that limits to growth could end up making growth based on the consumption of energy sources impossible. The solution they propose is to apply the principles of Degrowth: that is, reduce consumption and production to levels at which resources can be regenerated naturally, while distributing the wealth of rich countries to the rest of the world. This concept should not be confused with that of sustainable development, since the latter believes that it would be possible to continue increasing growth, while protecting the environment. Others are more optimistic and believe that, while local environmental effects can be detected, large-scale ecological effects are minor. Optimists say that if these global ecological changes exist, human ingenuity will find a way to adapt to them.
The pace or type of economic growth can have important consequences for the environment (climate and the natural capital of ecosystems). Concern about the possible negative effects of growth on the environment and society has led certain scientific sectors to defend lower levels of growth, which is where the idea of economic degrowth and green parties come from, which think that national economies are part of a world society and a global ecological system, so they cannot exploit their capacity for natural growth without harming them.
Canadian scientist David Suzuki stated in the 1990s that ecosystems can only support annual growth of between 1.5 and 3% per year, and therefore any attempt to achieve higher yields from agriculture or forests will necessarily end up cannibalizing the natural capital of the soil or forests. There are those who think that this argument can be applied even to the most developed economies. Conventional economists believe that economies advance thanks to technological advances, for example: we now have faster computers than a year ago, but not necessarily a greater number of computers. Perhaps we have gotten rid of physical limitations by betting more on knowledge than on physical production.
On the other hand, it is a historical fact that in the last two centuries economic growth has presented cyclical fluctuations and crises in each and every one of the countries and at the international level. Every economic boom eventually leads to recession and crisis, which ends up opening the conditions for reactivation, which in turn clears the way for a new boom. The economic cycle studied by Clemente Juglar, Karl Marx, Wesley Mitchell, Joseph Schumpeter, Nikolai Kondratieff and other notable economists is a reality to take into account without which any serious estimate of economic growth is impossible.