Degrowth

As the Limits to Growth report made clear in 1972, the Earth simply cannot support the limitless growth and resource consumption upon which the present economic order depends. Degrowth is a movement and theory emphasizing the need for transition to a sustainable, equitable economy and society that does not depend on the impossibility of infinite growth. It is closely related to anti-consumerism, and an essential strategy to reducing the impact of climate change.

A counter-argument to degrowth is the idea that we can “decouple” present levels of economic growth from environmental degradation (this is sometimes called “green growth”). The European Environmental Bureau has a paper Decoupling Debunked which presents evidence that “decoupling on its own, i.e. without addressing the issue of economic growth, has not been and will not be sufficient to reduce environmental pressures to the required extent” while acknowledging that greener growth can still be useful in the short term and should not be opposed because “without many such measures the situation would be far worse”. The tension between “decoupling” and “degrowth” reminds me of Shifting the Burden, a system trap. Even though decoupling can help, is it a short-term “intervenor” we might grow dependent on instead of addressing the root cause, which is the incompatibility between infinite growth and limited environmental resources.

Degrowth does not have to mean a lower quality of life

Rebecca Solnit:

What if we imagined “wealth” consisting not of the money we stuff into banks or the fossil fuel-derived goods we pile up, but of joy, beauty, friendship, community, closeness to flourishing nature, to good food produced without abuse of labor? What if we were to think of wealth as security in our environments and societies, and as confidence in a viable future?

“Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,” William Wordsworth wrote a couple of centuries ago. What would it mean to recover those powers, to be rich in time instead of stuff?

For so many of us, being busy with work has leached away our capacity to pursue true riches. What if we were to prioritize reclaiming our time — to fret less about getting and spending — and instead “spend” this precious resource on creative pursuits, on adventure and learning, on building stronger societies and being better citizens, on caring for the people (and other species and places) we love, on taking care of ourselves?

Degrowth depends on reducing income inequality

For half a century, economic growth has been used to hide widening inequality of income, wealth, and thus power. As the podcast The Tipping Point on The Limits to Growth summarizes:

To economists and the politicians they advised, growth was not just a means to overcome environmental limits. It was a way to mask social problems, too. Since the 1970s the United States and other rich countries had begun slashing taxes to stimulate growth, leading to higher incomes but also widening inequality. As economist Henry Wallich, a prominent Limits to Growth critic had once said, “Economic growth is a substitute for equality of income. So long as there is growth there is hope, and that makes large income differentials tolerable.”

Further Reading

• How We End Consumerism, a YouTube video by Our Changing Climate
• Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (which I haven’t read yet)
• Doughnut Economics is an economic framework that is “growth-agnostic” and adopts many of the ideas behind degrowth