Claim: “Throw Away” Conventional Economics to Become a Renewable Superpower
13 hours ago
Essay by Eric Worrall
“… productivity … has deluded far too many of the economics profession’s conventional thinkers.”
Ross Garnaut: Prophet with a sunny vision of our glorious future
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor
May 12, 2025 — 12.15am
Economist Paul Krugman’s endlessly repeated maxim that “productivity isn’t everything but, in the long run, it’s almost everything” has deluded far too many of the economics profession’s conventional thinkers.
It’s a throwaway line that should be thrown away.
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Fortunately, among the profession’s abundance of unproductive thinkers is a lone prophetic, and so productive, thinker, Professor Ross Garnaut, who sees not only how we can minimise the economic cost of the transition to clean energy, but also what we can do for an encore. What we can do to fill the vacuum left by the looming collapse of our fossil fuel export business (which, by chance, happens to be our highest-productivity industry).
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It was Garnaut who first had the vision of transforming Australia into a “Superpower” in a world of ubiquitous renewable energy. And it was he who uncovered the facts that made this goal plausible.
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This would “generate export income for Australians vastly in excess of that provided by the gas and coal industries that will decline as the world moves to net zero emissions over the next few decades”.
Garnaut concludes: “The new industries are large enough to drive restoration of growth in Australian productivity and living standards after the dozen years of stagnation that began in 2013.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/12/claim-australias-path-to-being-a-solar-superpower-involves-throwing-away-productivity-growth/
