If money and growth cause emissions (through spending, production, travel, etc.), then paying writers in non- monetary hugs would eliminate that “cascade of greenhouse gas emissions” from cash circulation.

Promotions could mean extra daily hugs instead of raises; senior staff could retire rich in affection while their salaries stay locked away. It’s clearly tongue- in- cheek ridicule, implying anti- growth advocates should practice what they preach and of course, no serious publication (Guardian or otherwise) would adopt it.

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From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Guardian author Alex Clark wants the world to “move beyond” GDP as a measure of wellbeing. The experiment should start with The Guardian.

Economic growth is still heating the planet. Is there any way out?

Rising GDP continues to mean more carbon emissions and wider damage to the planet. Can the two be decoupled?

Alex Clark
Mon 9 Feb 2026 19.00 AEDT

During Cop30 negotiations in Brazil last year, delegates heard a familiar argument: rising emissions are unavoidable for countries pursuing growth.

That pattern seems to be holding. In 2024, global GDP per capita reached a new high as did annual carbon emissions. But as climate targets slip and warnings mount that tipping points may already have been crossed, faith in growth for growth’s sake is starting to fracture.

This week, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, called for economies to “move beyond GDP” as a measure of progress, warning that the world’s “existing accounting systems” were driving the planet towards disaster.

The standard run of the Limits to Growth model predicted a tipping point beginning in the 2020s.

Now we are in the 2020s and it is unclear if we are facing the scenario Limits to Growth described.

Why we have avoided this – and whether we ultimately will – are key questions in post-growth economics.

…Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2026/feb/09/economic-growth-carbon-emissions-impact-global-heating

The Limits to Growth. Wow.

The fact we are still happy and prosperous in the 2020s, a deadline which Limits to Growth implicitly sets as a tipping point, should be a hint that Limits to Growth calculations were a pile of junk (see the graph at the top of this article).

But let’s be fair and give the authors a chance to speak. What did Limits say about the timing of events in their graph?

The exact timing of these events is not meaningful, given the great aggregation and many uncertainties in the model. It is significant, however, that growth is stopped well before the year 2100. 

We have tried in every doubtful case to make the most optimistic estimate of unknown quantities, and we have also ignored discontinuous events such as wars or epidemics, which might act to bring an end to growth even sooner than our model would indicate. In other words, the model is biased to allow growth to continue longer than it probably can continue in the real world. 

We can thus say with some confidence that, under the assumption of no major change in the present system, population and industrial growth will certainly stop within the next century, at the latest.

Read more: Page 126, https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/

So, they’re not taking responsibility if they are wrong about the “exact timing”, but they think their graph is optimistic.

One of my favourite responses to The Limits to Growth was published by The New York Times in 1972, shortly after the publication of Limits. NYT points out inevitable doom was baked into the Limits to Growth calculations, by attaching exponential growth in needs and consequences to an arbitrary estimate of limits – completely ignoring that we’ve never encountered a limit we cannot overcome.

… “The Limits to Growth,” in our view, is an empty and misleading work. Its imposing apparatus of computer technology and systems jargon conceals a kind of intellectual Rube Goldberg device—one which takes arbitrary assumptions, shakes them up and comes out with arbitrary conclusions that have the ring of science. “Limits” pretends to a degree of certainty so exaggerated as to obscure the few modest (and unoriginal) insights that it genuinely contains. Less than pseudoscience and little more than polemical fiction, “The Limits to Growth” is best summarized not as a rediscovery of the laws of nature but as a rediscovery of the oldest maxim of computer science: Garbage In, Garbage Out.

As a first approximation of the future, the authors assume that the world is utterly incapable of adjusting to problems of scarcity. Technology stagnates and pollution is ignored, even as it chokes millions to death. A shortage of raw materials prevents industry and agriculture from keeping up with population growth. World reserves of vital materials (silver, tungsten, mercury, etc.) are exhausted within 40 years. Around 2020 the pinch becomes tight enough to cause a fall in per capita income. A few decades later, malnutrition and lagging health services abruptly reverse the climbing population trend. By the year 2100 the resource base has shrunk so badly that the world economy is unable to sustain even 19th‐century living standards.

It is no coincidence that all the simulations based on the Meadows world model invariably end in collapse. As in any simulation, the results depend on the information initially fed to the computer. And the “Limits” team fixes the wheel; no matter how ‘many times you play there is only one possible outcome. Critical to their model is the notion that growth produces stresses (pollution, resource demands, food requirements) which multiply geometrically. Like compound interest on a savings account, these stresses accumulate at a pace that constantly accelerates: Every child born is not only another mouth to feed but another potential parent. Every new factory not only drains away exhaustible resources but increases our capacity to build more factories. Geometric (or as mathematicians prefer to call it, exponential) growth must eventually produce spectacular results. If the Indians who sold Manhattan 300 years ago for $24 could have left their money untouched in a bank paying 7 per cent (a number chosen no more arbitrarily than many in “Limits”) they would have more than $25‐ billion today.

…Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/02/archives/the-limits-to-growth-a-report-for-the-club-of-romes-project-on-the.html

As for post growth economics, why not lead by example? The Guardian could make a start right in the offices of The Guardian.

Borrowing from one of my favourite authors PJ O’Rourke‘s writing on post growth economics, let’s replace Guardian salary income with hugs.

If every Guardian reporter were to voluntarily take a £100 / week pay cut and instead receive a hug every day from the senior manager of their choice, that would be a powerful statement of commitment to disavowing money and economic growth as the sole measure of human wellbeing.

After all, a hug is a way of improving your happiness which doesn’t involve damaging economic activity. Receiving a hug instead of money eliminates an entire cascade of greenhouse gas emissions which spending that £100 and circulating that £100 through the economy could have caused.

For the truly climate ambitious Guardian staff, when they receive a promotion, they could demand two hugs per day instead of an increase in salary.

As for senior management, look how many hugs they would receive under this system. This would be an opportunity for senior management to equalise the monetary component of their salaries with their workers, while receiving lots of human kindness and hugs in place of all the money they would otherwise have earned. The village, which is The Guardian could become truly equal, with love replacing monetary reward for those who have the toughest jobs.

Of course, the damage would still occur if a selfish senior manager trousered the missing £100 salary sacrifices and spent the money, so that money must never be spent. Destroying money is illegal in the UK, so throw it into a vault with no door, just a slot for shoving in money.

Let’s just say I’m not holding my breath waiting for that post growth economic experiment to be implemented.