Is it radical to believe in growth?

Plenty may be possible—but what would it take to make it probable?
In this episode of the Century of Plenty podcast, Sven Smit, Chris Bradley, Nick Leung, and Marc Canal share reactions to their book from around the world and take on the hardest objections regarding demographics, climate change, energy, and AI. They discuss:
◼ How audiences from China to Africa to Europe accept that a world of plenty is possible, but there are real debates about execution.
◼ How collapsing fertility, rather than resource limits, may be the century’s defining challenge, and why growth and adaptation can address climate change even in an economy eight times larger than today’s.
◼ Why AI is better understood as a curve than as a fixed point, and how a shift from zero-sum to non-zero-sum thinking could turn plenty from possible to probable.

Chapters:
(00:00:00) Intro
(00:00:37) Is optimism different around the world?
(00:04:36) What stands in the way of plenty?
(00:09:29) The toughest questions: population, energy, nature & AI
(00:15:22) The demographic cliff: are we running out of people?
(00:25:50) Taking on runaway climate change
(00:32:36) The race for abundant energy
(00:35:39) Does prosperity destroy—or protect—nature?
(00:48:39) Is AI different from every technology before it?
(00:56:18) AI bubble or the beginning of an 8.5x economy?
(00:59:39) A question of framing

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