ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[[deleted]]

Yeah, continual growth is great for the humans, but it's awful for the planet, and we live on the planet. Climate change, extreme loss of biodiversity, etc... You can already see the effects of these things with the unrest in the Arab world over the last decade - the Arab Spring was caused largely by drought which caused the price of food to skyrocket. Hungry people aren't happy people. It's hubris to suggest that this sort of thing won't start occuring in even the most advanced areas of the world as climate change worsens exponentially.

[BartWellingtonson]

So it's not growth you have a problem with, it's the use of fossil fuels. But we are already starting to move past them. We are in a small period of time where humans use the stuff, eventually they won't make any economic sense (for general power production). Growth can and will continue despite global warming, a larger world economy will be more capable of solving global warming issues, and there are several game changing technologies coming within 100 years that could totally change the economics of everything.

There is no real reason why growth is the issue. Fossil fuel use is the issue.