#economic degrowth

[rjzimmerman]

Ending growth won’t save the planet. (Washington Post Op-Ed)

Ever since Thomas Malthus argued just over 200 years ago that population growth would outstrip “the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man,” there has been a continuous parade of Cassandras fretting that humanity is about to exhaust the planet’s carrying capacity.

Neo-Malthusian thinking inspired such 20th-century writings as Paul Ehrlich’s 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” and the Club of Rome’s 1972 “The Limits to Growth,” which predicted civilization would end “sometime within the next one hundred years.” In “Toward a Steady-State Economy,” published in 1973, economist Herman Daly argued that economic growth should be resisted for the sake of the environment.

Climate change is drawing out such sentiments again. Yet the prescription — that economic growth must stop — is as wrong as it was when the grim Rev. Malthus predicted that a growing population would outstrip the Earth’s capacity to produce food, requiring famine, war and pestilence to bring humanity’s numbers back to a sustainable level.

“Degrowth” — the brand name for neo-Malthusianism — ignores how ingenuity and innovation have repeatedly empowered humanity to overcome ecological constraints identified by Malthus, Ehrlich, et al. Degrowthers ignore basic lessons of history: The world experienced no growth for hundreds of years. Getting ahead economically during certain periods of the Middle Ages, for example, required plundering one’s neighbor. Transactions were zero-sum. The outcome was centuries of conquest and subjugation.

Malthus made his predictions just as England and the rest of Europe were about to enter a two-century era of unprecedented economic growth, which liberated much of humanity from misery and drastically improved health and well-being. Ehrlich’s prophecies came just as the Green Revolution in agriculture was saving hundreds of millions from hunger.

Growth built a world in which one person’s gain needn’t require another’s loss. Consensual politics and democracy wouldn’t have been possible without it. We wonder how Daly or his acolytes would be received in the bustling yet poor megalopolis of Lagos, Nigeria, proclaiming the end of growth (or procreation) to save the planet.

And yet degrowth is coming back in fashion. The ranks of degrowthers include progressive journalist Naomi Klein, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and even Pope Francis. At least one European university is now offering a master’s degree in degrowth.

The truth is that degrowth wouldn’t fix climate change even in the unlikely event it could be imposed. Carbon emissions from economic growth can be understood as the product of four factors: population growth, growth in economic output per person, changes in the amount of energy needed for economic production, and the change in how much carbon dioxide is released when energy is consumed.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates these variables up to 2050. One inescapable conclusion: Zeroing out growth in gross domestic product would do little to reduce emissions. Even if output per person remained stuck at 2023 levels all the way to mid-century, humanity would still miss its 2050 target to reach net-zero emissions — by 26 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

Halting growth in rich countries alone — allowing poor countries such as Nigeria to keep growing, hopefully to one day attain the economic well-being that affluent nations enjoy today — would do even less for the climate. Under this scenario, the world would miss its mid-century CO2 target by 38 billion tons.

Cutting emissions to safer levels would require epic degrowth. Getting carbon dioxide emissions below 10 billion tons per year in 2050 would demand inducing recessions that would cut world GDP per capita by about 5 percent per year — more than the loss during the 2008-2009 Great Recession.

[jadagul]

Stupid thought I kind of believe: no one can agree on what "neoliberalism" means, but extensionally it's "whatever we've been doing, economically, for the past few decades."

Therefore, a major component of neoliberalism must be degrowth. It might be neoliberalism's fatal flaw!

[probablyasocialecologist]

Ending mass human deprivation and providing good lives for the whole world's population can be accomplished while at the same time achieving ecological objectives. This is demonstrated by a new study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) and the London School of Economics and Political Science, recently published in World Development Perspectives. About 80% of humanity cannot access necessary goods and services and lives below the threshold for "decent living." Some narratives claim that addressing this problem will require massive economic growth on a global scale, multiplying existing output many times over, which would exacerbate climate change and ecological breakdown. The authors of the new study dispute this claim and argue that human development does not require such a dangerous approach. Reviewing recent empirical research, they find that ending mass deprivation and provisioning decent living standards for 8.5 billion people would require only 30% of current global resource and energy use, leaving a substantial surplus for additional consumption, public luxury, scientific advancement, and other social investments. This would ensure that everyone in the world has access to nutritious food, modern housing, high-quality health care, education, electricity, induction stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigerators, heating/cooling systems, computers, mobile phones, internet, and transport, and could also include universal access to recreational facilities, theaters, and other public goods. The authors argue that, to achieve such a future, strategies for development should not pursue capitalist growth and increased aggregate production as such but should rather increase the specific forms of production that are necessary to improve capabilities and meet human needs at a high standard, while ensuring universal access to key goods and services through public provisioning and decommodification. In the Global South, this requires using industrial policy to increase economic sovereignty, develop industrial capacity, and organize production around human well-being. At the same time, in high-income countries, less-necessary production (of things like mansions, SUVs, private jets and fast fashion) must be scaled down to enable faster decarbonization and to help bring resource use back within planetary boundaries, as degrowth scholarship holds.

July 25 2024

[titleknown]

...You know, while I still kinda hate degrowth as a movement, I kinda realized that as one economic technique amongst many, it's not only kinda good but necessary.

Like, comrade @marsworms helped turn me around on this, but like, thinking about it in the way that; say; a gardener prunes trees or rosebushes so they can grow makes sense.

And, like, the fact that we have approximately zero economic tools to do this without everything breaking is kind of a fucking problem, especially when we need to do that to sectors like; say; finance; advertising; or fossil fuel production in favor of the World War-level effort we need on the fucking climate problem.

It gets you to scenarios like the one this is making fun of where, when everyone would be kinda okay with maintaining a holding pattern; nobody can actually do that:

But the market has a solution! The solution is, unfortunately, trying to extract everything they can before it crashes and burns so capital can escape on golden parachutes while labor fucking dies in the impact.

Which, in addition to the obvious of being extremely cruel, is also enormously wasteful and destructive. And it would be nice if we had a better option than that, especially when the the thing that would be left to crash and burn is a livable ecosystem with a functioning global society...

...Now, the reason I hate degrowth as a movement is because I trust the fuckers most aggressively advocating for it approximately zero percent to administer such things in a way that isn't miserable.

This is both because of their monofocus on it as a total societal paradigm shift (remember that old aphorism about how fire is a good tool but a terrible master), and also their garbage hippie-aesthetic anprim/neo-Amish tendencies.

You can see this in their general broad contempt for the internet and personal computing despite how, I would argue, it is a massive good for humanity that should be expanded universally.

Or how they hypocritically talk about how much time people will have to do art, despite also aggressively advocating for the sorts of resource-bottlenecks that every artist in our current system can observe currently fucking them over, probably rooted in how they don't really seem to respect any artforms more materially-intensive than folk art (See also: How they think of digital forms of art)

Or the also two-faced way that they insist that they aren't advocating for austerity despite how much they talk about how much enforcement of their hippie aeceticism as paradigm shift would be based on a local panopticon.

Like, part of my initial broad-spectrum antipathy towards even the techique probably came from the people I first heard it from, like this site dedicated to news about transition towns, this one site that was heavy on what I'd later realize was a lefty version of the "great reset" theory, garbage like Peter Gelderloos' "An Anarchist Solution To Global Warming" or Giorgios Kallis' awful book "Limits" (Ask me about the fucking boat sometime, I have Words about that bit) or the sorts of people who unironically say "the concept of emerging technologies is a capitalist grift"

And, while I have added nuance, I still can't get over the sneaking suspicion that a lot of people who advocate for degrowth most actively are; in their hearts; still mostly kinda Like That...

[protoslacker]

This “green production” requires mobilizing massive amounts of labour, factories, materials, engineering talent, and so on.  In a growth-oriented scenario, this is difficult to do because our productive capacities are already devoted to other activities (activities that are organized around profit and which may not contribute to social and ecological objectives). So we need to either compete with existing forms of production (for labour, materials, energy etc, which can drive prices up), or otherwise increase total productive capacity (i.e., grow the economy).  This cannot be done at just any desired speed.  Under these conditions, there are very real physical limits to how fast we can decarbonize. 

Jason Hickel on his blog. Accelerationist Possibilities in an EcoSocialist Degrowth Scenario

[theadaptableeducator]

Reimagining Futures: Ernst Bloch's Vision for Sustainable Alternatives to Colonialism, Nationalism, Imperialism, and Capitalism

Ernst Bloch, a German Marxist philosopher, is renowned for his works on utopia, hope, and the anticipation of better futures. His theories can provide valuable insights into the interconnectedness and unsustainability of colonialism, nationalism, imperialism, and capitalism, as well as offer guidance toward sustainable alternatives. Interconnectivity and Unsustainability Colonialism and…

[humanecosystem]

I am someone who is inclined to doomscroll. In my very-online young adult life, I am susceptible to all kinds of algorithmic traps on social media. Like many others online, I can quickly become hyperfocused on systemic violence, poverty, suffering, and environmental destruction. This trend has horrific impacts on our wellbeing; I myself have been to some very dark places. Pessimism becomes the only worthy default setting. How can any of us go on living in a world driven by billionaires for selfish gains at the expense of the individual, of their community, livelihood, and dignity?

In the past year and a half, I have been developing a new consciousness, a new way of thinking about wicked problems that are reduced to tiktoks posted a million times an hour. I found this possible as a result of my courses in ecological economics. Though it's a niche academic field that requires a systems-thinking approach, I think many of the ideas being discussed by modern scholars can easily be digested. They make deeper sense to me than anything I've studied so far. For these reasons, I think this information has the power to help us zoomers adopt a holistic worldview and a greater purpose as individuals and as a generation. I hope to share more accessible information on this blog and to foster discussion of sustainability that rejects corporate nonsense.

There is a lot more I could say in this post, and I will revisit this notebook page to summarize its content. But for now, this is just my introduction.

[perhaps-relax]

heeey im not a human geography expert, and ive bit my tongue about this before but.....endless population growth is actually an existential crisis facing the human race. its very tempting to brush off all warning around the earth's carrying capacity as malthusian pseudoscience used to shift the blame for resource scarcity on emerging nations, but the truth is that we are globally failing to feed and house 7 billion people, and not just because of greedy neoliberal politics or wasteful supply chains. its just a Lot of people and a Limited amount of land.

its not impossible, but i just think its important not to downplay the inherent logistical challenges, even in a scenario where enough of the world's decision-makers came together to solve world hunger. and some of the solutions are likely going to involve policies that accommodate population de-growth, at least in wealthy nations.

[larrywilmore]

Is degrowth the next step?

Is capitalism the path to destruction of the planet? Noel King and I discuss how degrowth is now being seriously considered by economists and what that means for our economy. 

And be sure to check out her excellent podcast 'Today Explained: Blame Capitalism.' 

Listen to our full conversation

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

A rising tide and a bigger pie: Economic growth has long been considered such an obvious boon that it’s pursued by governments across the world as a matter of course. But in 2016, when a London professor warned an audience in Newcastle that Brexit would lead to a precipitous drop in Britain’s gross domestic product, that well-worn measure of economic activity, one woman’s heckling caught him by surprise. “That’s your bloody G.D.P.,” she shouted, “not ours!”

The eruption tapped into a suspicion supported by reality: Gains in economic growth have too often buoyed the fortunes of the richest instead of lifting all boats. Prosperity even in the most prosperous countries hasn’t been shared. But all the attention to inequality is just a crack in the edifice of economic orthodoxy. Now a much more radical proposition has emerged, looming like a wrecking ball: Is economic growth desirable at all?

Less than two decades ago, an economist like Herman Daly, who argued for a “steady-state economy,” was such an outlier that his fellow economist Benjamin Friedman could declare that “practically nobody opposes economic growth per se.” Yet today there is a burgeoning “post-growth” and “degrowth” movement doing exactly that — in journals, on podcasts, at conferences. Consider some of the books published in the last several years: Tim Jackson’s “Post-Growth: Life After Capitalism,” Kate Soper’s “Post-Growth Living,” Giorgos Kallis’s “In Defense of Degrowth,” Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson’s “Exploring Degrowth,” Jason Hickel’s “Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World.” The proliferation of the term is as good an indicator as any: The literature of degrowth is growing.

In 1972, the French theorist André Gorz coined the word décroissance to ask whether “no-growth — or even degrowth” in material production was necessary for “the earth’s balance,” even if it ran counter to “the survival of the capitalist system.” Gorz was writing the same year that “The Limits to Growth” was published, a report by a group of scientists warning that surges in population and economic activity would eventually outstrip the carrying capacity of the planet. “The Limits to Growth” was initially met with skepticism and even ridicule. Critics pointed to humanity’s undeniably impressive record of technological innovation. As one representative economist put it, “Our predictions are firmly based on a study of the way these problems have been overcome in the past.”

And so degrowth remained on the fringes of the fringe for decades, until increasing awareness about global warming percolated into public debates in the early aughts. The realization that we hadn’t innovated our way out of our ecological predicament, along with inequalities laid bare by the 2008 financial crisis, fueled a more widespread distrust of the conventional capitalist wisdom. Maybe relentless economic growth was more poison than panacea.

[probablyasocialecologist]

[vcpide]

Reimagining Economics: Historical Sensitivity and Human Welfare as Core Principles

On September 24th, 2024, at a seminar arranged by Ankara Yıldırım Beyazıt University (AYBU) and Institute for International Relations and Strategic Research (ULISA | IIRSR) & Econometric Research Association, I discussed research opportunities for students created by addressing two major methodological flaws in modern economics. These flaws are rooted in historical shifts in economic thought.…

[nando161mando]

He's not wrong

[horizonsstandstill]

We will have to do this the old way. The reliable method. Think practical. If all the biggest consumers and polluters are gone, we will prevent ten times more damage than roundabout ways of science we haven't invented yet (for things like autoimmune disorders caused by herbicide/pesticide/insecticide use, reversion of the damage done to ocean floor that's causing an increase in the magnitude and count of earthquakes, reversion of some types of habitat losses, reversion of ocean heat, reversion of lost species so on).

All the imperialism relies on polluting and destroying the environment through the wars that also ruin the environment for the resources that will also cause perils to environment while they are being used. Getting rid of the problem that's causing all the problems is the most logical thing.

The thing about science is that, governments use it to buy themselves time for giving us baseless hopes because they will never be funding those projects instead of things like spending on military budget or subsidising oil. It's just a greenwashing ad campaign that is meant to lull people into complacency until it's too late to do anything about the catastrophic events happening.

All the capitalist growth models are based on future discounts where people value present over future. Which is realistic, and it pushes us into a corner where sustainability cannot be managed without the destruction of the biggest enemies of the environment. When we replace their poorly assumed stochastic environmental risks as inevitable doom caused by actions of the present, we get degrowth as the most rational policy decision.

Show me one government or a large corporation that will accept that. They want us to suffer all externalities of their capitalist race to the bottom. The dick measuring contests between them is spending more resources than the revitalisation of poor and the oppressed people they have. Anyone who preaches that's normal or that's how things should be or we have no better alternatives are our enemies that everyone is better off if they were made shut up permanently.

Start with the economists(!) that preach that's better for the whole world. Or that's the best system amongst the ones we have. The recognition of capitalist economic ideology as a science has contributed to more evils than the good things science contributed to our societies. Science is itself ideological and most of the scientists whether aware or unaware, are serving the interests of oppressive governments and evil capitalists. Anything that doesn't serve that, you will have a hard time getting published. Gatekeeping and the other means of preventing the distribution of relevant information is an innate part of state propaganda.

ALT

[protoslacker]

The challenges we face are not insurmountable. We already know what needs to be done, the problem is that we do not have control over our own productive capacities and, as a result, they are woefully misallocated.  This approach ��� credit/investment guidance and public finance – democratizes the power of money and therefore democratizes power over our collective productive capacities. It would enable us to radically accelerate improvements in people’s everyday lives and social outcomes, and radically accelerate progress toward decarbonization and ecological sustainbility.

Jason Hickel at his blog. Credit guidance: how we achieve degrowth